


Tied

by Anonymous



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Abandonment, Aftercare, Airplane Crashes, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anal Cock Warming, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Anger, Angst, Banter, Bathing/Washing, Biting, Body Worship, Bondage, Break Up Talk, Breakfast in Bed, Brief and vague reference to what could be interpreted as a drug deal in flashback, Brief reference to pregnancy in the context of Kylo’s parents being pregnant with him, Caretaking, Chasing, Child Abandonment, Child Neglect, Choking, Chore Kink, Closet Sex, Cock Warming, Cock warming on a conference call, Comfort, Cowgirl Position, Crying During Sex, Cunnilingus, Denial of Feelings, Developing Relationship, Dildos, Disobedience, Disobeying Orders, Dom/sub, Domestic Fluff, Domestic Kink, Dominant Kylo Ren, Drug Addiction, Dry Humping, Dysfunctional Family, Eating, Edging, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt, Emotional Withdrawal, Everyone Needs Therapy, Exhibitionism, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Face-Fucking, Feeding, Female Ejaculation, Feminism, Finger Sucking, Fingerfucking, First Dates, Five Stages of Grief, Floor Sex, Fluff, Foster Care, Fucking, Grief/Mourning, Hair Washing, Hair-pulling, Happy Ending, Held Down, Hide and Seek, Huddling For Warmth, Hyperventilation, In Rey’s backstory:, Intercrural Sex, Kink Negotiation, Kissing, Kylo calls Rey “kitten”, Kylo calls Rey “pet”, Lack of Communication, Lap Sex, Light BDSM, Light Bondage, Masturbation, Meditations on Gender Roles, Menstrual Pain, Menstrual Sex, Menstruation, Mental Health Issues, Mention of Vasectomy, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Mirror Sex, Missionary Position, Morning Sex, Multiple Orgasms, Naked Female Clothed Male, Nipple Play, No Pregnancy, Obedience, Online Dating, Oral Sex, Oral Sex During Period, Orgasm Control, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Orgasm Denial, Over-the-counter painkillers, Overstimulation, Panic Attack, Parent Death, Parent Issues, Pet Names, Police, Praise Kink, Prostitution, Punishment, Reconciliation, Reference to alcohol but no drinking, Rooftop Terrace, Rope Bondage, Rough Oral Sex, Safeword Use, Safewords, Self-Destruction, Semi-Public Sex, Sex Toys, Shaving, Shower Sex, Sleeping Together, Sleepwalking, Smut, Social Commentary, Soft sex, Spanking, Spooning, Squirting, Standing Sex, Stockings, Sub Drop, Submissive Rey (Star Wars), Suggestion of Therapy, Teasing, Theft, Therapy, Thigh Slapping, Topping from the Bottom, Under-negotiated Kink, Unsafe Sex, Vaginal Sex, accidental feelings, anxiety attack, argument, birth control discussion, food insecurity, pussy slapping
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:00:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 56,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26296822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Is this the only way you can get off?What do you mean?By telling people what to do? Having complete control over them?No.So why don’t you do it the normal way?You’ll see.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 1266
Kudos: 2048
Collections: Anonymous





	1. Chapter 1

She had been fully dressed when he arrived, as he’d instructed. Washing dishes. He’d loosened his tie and unbuttoned his top button, but hadn’t taken any clothes off before he came up behind her. He’d silently turned the faucet off and she’d turned around and stood there with her hands out, palms up, waiting for her to dry them with a towel. He did, gently but firmly.

_Do you want me to be gentle?_

_Yes._

_Do you really?_

He’d folded the towel precisely and hung it back on the oven handle. She’d stood there waiting for him. Half her life is spent waiting for him, it feels like. It’s not worth it, except that it entirely is.

He knows her clothes by now. There’s scarcely anything she owns that he hasn’t taken off of her at some point. She just has to stand there and let him. It’s a t-shirt and jean shorts today. There’s nothing sensual in how he undresses her. It’s not urgent, either—just a means to an end. As if he’s undressing himself at the end of the day, except that it happens to be her. Is there really a difference between the body she lives in and the body he lives in? They’re both his.

She surrenders.

_You like being commanded._

_No, I don’t._

_Have you tried it?_

_No._

_Then how do you know?_

He folds her clothes, even though they’re going in the wash after this. It’s part of some kind of ritual for him. She watches. He’s good at it; he can fold her shirts in mid-air with more precise corners than she can achieve on a flat surface. He doesn’t have any reason to be good at folding clothes: enough money alleviates that necessity. It’s a point of pride, probably. He likes to be good at things. No, not _likes_ —he hates not being good at things. The first time he’d gone down on her he hadn’t stopped after three orgasms, even after she tugged his hair and cried.

He’d given her seven orgasms that night, and it hurt, toward the end. Her body kept insisting that she had nothing left. But she never told him to stop, and so he hadn’t. She’d wept as he fucked her face-down through the last one.

It was cathartic—she’d needed to cry. He didn’t mind her tears, or maybe he got off on them.

_What do you want, Rey?_

_Fuck me._

_I don’t think you mean that. I think you want me to make tender love to you. You want the fairy tale._

_Have you actually read fairy tales?_

He puts the perfect rectangles of clothing on the kitchen table and goes over to the sofa. He sits down. She doesn’t follow, because she doesn’t yet know what he wants her to do. He might ask her to vacuum, or sit in the armchair and read a book. Or knit. Or fuck herself with a spatula handle. Sometimes he doesn’t touch her for hours. She hasn’t been able to figure out if it’s his self-control he’s testing or hers. Maybe one night the anticipation will be so unbearable that she’ll defy him and start desperately humping the leather arm of the sofa.

“Come here.”

She sighs in relief.

_I’m not a nice person._

_What does that have to do with anything?_

_You should know that, if we’re going to do this._

_I don’t care._

_You might._

She comes to stand by his knee. He doesn’t look up at her. He slowly unknots his tie and pulls it off. He grips it in one fist and runs it through the other silently. She waits.

Early on, she thought that he would run out of ideas eventually, or at least decide on things he liked the best and start coming back to them. He doesn’t. She’d thought there were only so many ways someone could cum. Apparently she was wrong.

Her body is at his disposal. She doesn’t know why she trusted him with it so quickly, unless it was the fact that she’d had to be on guard for her entire life and she was so fucking sick of it. She surrendered her safety to him, and he could’ve done anything he wanted. He takes scrupulous care of her, even when he’s shoving her head into the mattress. If he likes her body enough, maybe she can keep dropping it off with him to take care of every Saturday evening. To give her a night off.

_Do you want to cum?_

_What? Why wouldn’t I?_

_Do you want to cum four minutes from now or four hours?_

_What kind of question is that? Why would I want to wait four hours?_

_Oh, Rey._

“Come stand between my feet.”

She does.

He sits up enough to pass one end of the tie behind her thighs. He tugs one end, then the other, so the silk slides back and forth across her skin just above the back of her knees. She wonders if he’s decided what he wants to do with her or if he’s still thinking. She’s happy to wait. The longer he thinks, the longer she doesn’t have to.

“Step up on the couch,” he says. “Stand between my legs.”

She obeys without hesitation. He puts his tie down on his knee, sits back, and spreads his arms luxuriously along the back of the sofa. No part of them is touching. She glances down at him. He’s looking at her knees.

“Are you wet for me, pet?” His tone is casual. Indulgent.

“Yes.”

“Show me.”

She shifts her weight to extract one of her feet from between his legs, but he says, “No. I didn’t tell you to move.”

She freezes.

“Get one of your fingers wet, then show it to me.”

She brings one hand to the cleft between her thighs. She parts her folds with an index finger, marveling anew at how hot a part of her body can be when she doesn’t have a fever. She slides her finger through slowly, coating it thoroughly. She pulls it away and holds it out for him.

He clucks indulgently. “You’re soaked, pet. Did you make all that for me?”

Her cunt clenches at the praise. “Yes.”

“Put it in my mouth.”

She bends forward at the waist enough to part his lips with her finger. He captures it with his teeth and runs his tongue along the rough pad of her fingertip. Without warning, he inhales her finger with suction that she could’ve resisted if she’d seen it coming, but she didn’t. And she wouldn’t, anyway—resist him.

He sucks her finger like a cock. She wonders if he’s given oral to men. _Given_ probably isn’t the right word. She wonders if he’s permitted men to receive oral from him.

He pulls back so her finger leaves the warmth of his mouth. “More.”

_What’s the longest orgasm you’ve ever had?_

_I dunno, maybe six seconds?_

_I’ll give you one that lasts sixty._

_That’s impossible._

_Would you like to bet?_

She returns her hand to her swollen gash and collects a new offering for him. Her finger is the plaything of his mouth. He wedges it between his molars on one side and bites down just hard enough to approach hurt. He massages it with the inside of his cheeks and laps at it with his tongue. She stands over him, between his legs, on his sofa, and lets him do it all.

The before-Kylo Rey would think it was ridiculous, standing barefoot on a leather sofa and methodically feeding him the slick from between her legs. This Rey doesn’t think. She trusts, and obeys blindly. Because _this_ Rey has had a minute-long orgasm.

He takes his mouth off her finger. “Step down off the couch.”

She does, back to standing between his feet.

He picks up the tie. He loops it behind her thighs again, but this time he ties it around them. A knot not quite snug enough to be uncomfortable, right above her knees. He ties a bow and smiles at his handiwork.

“Are you going to be obedient, pet?” One big hand caresses her thigh, just above the tie.

“Yes.”

“What would you like me to do with you?”

She swallows and answers truthfully. “Whatever you want.”

_This isn’t going to work if you think too hard._

_You’re telling me not to think?_

_You don’t need to. Let me._

_Fine. I’m not._

_Rey, I can hear you thinking from a mile away._

He lets her watch as he undoes his slacks and pulls his erect cock out. He doesn’t rub it or touch it beyond the minimum needed to extract it.

“I need you to keep this warm for me. Do you think you can do that?”

“Yes,” she breathes.

“Turn around.”

She does with difficulty. The tie hampers her range of motion, so she has to tiptoe in a half circle so her bare ass is facing him. He moves his feet closer together to make a lap she can sit on. She jumps when his hands grasp her hips without warning. He eases her back and she surrenders, letting him support her weight down to his lap. When she first sits, his cock nestles in the cleft of her ass, and he grunts in annoyance. She’s powerless to help. Her feet don’t touch the ground, and the tie keeps her from spreading her legs to find leverage. He snakes one forearm under her upper thighs and lifts, enough that when he sets her back down there’s a cock inside her.

She sits straight up, not leaning back against him. She’s not allowed to bob or squirm: those have been rules since the beginning. If she does, he’ll make her wait even longer before he fucks her. At the start her body wasn’t disciplined enough for the next rule: no clenching.

She thought it was impossible the first time he told her. It was a reflex, a natural instinct at having a cock buried motionless inside, to squeeze it. But he told her not to. She tries.

They say when someone tells you not to think about an elephant, that’s all your mind wants to think of. His cock is her elephant. She takes deep, silent breaths and wills her muscles not to contract.

“Thank you, pet, that’s very nice,” he says. She doesn’t know where his phone came from, but she can see it in his hand in her periphery. He scrolls with a lazy flick of his thumb. He pauses to read something.

She doesn’t know how long it will last, and she won’t ask. He could start fucking her in ten seconds, or he could make her warm his cock for half an hour and then lift her off, flip her over, and spank her without warning until her ass is red.

She didn’t know she could cum just from being spanked, before him.

_Is this the only way you can get off?_

_What do you mean?_

_By telling people what to do? Having complete control over them?_

_No._

_So why don’t you do it the normal way?_

_You’ll see._

It’s hard to gauge time like this, but she would guess that she starts sweating five minutes in. Her muscles start trembling with the effort of not clenching after another couple minutes. He keeps reading silently, giving no indication whatsoever that there’s a cunt around his cock.

It’s easier and harder having her thighs tied together: easier because her legs can’t be tempted to squirm, harder because it makes her cunt tighter. Her inner walls press in on him, and she won’t be able to resist clenching for much longer. She knows from experience that the spasming will begin soon.

Without looking away from his phone, he starts stroking a line up and down her spine. She silently blesses him for the distraction, for giving her body something else to feel. She might be able to hold out an extra minute like this. A bead of sweat runs down her hairline.

She sits rigid in her perch on top of him. When she first started sitting with her full weight on his lap, she worried aloud that it would be uncomfortable, that she was too heavy for him. He chuckled incredulously. He fucked her holding her that night. Not against the wall. In the middle of the living room, with her ankles locked behind his back and his hands spanning her ass and his arms lifting her again and again to let her fall against him with a slap. She screamed, the first time, from shock and the fear of anticipated pain. It didn’t come. He looked her in her eyes and made gravity fuck her, and when she screamed the next time it wasn’t from shock or fear.

_May I call you “pet?”_

_Why do you want to call me that?_

_What did I say about thinking so much?_

_Fine. You can call me “pet.”_

_Good girl._

She usually begs eventually. If he makes her wait long enough, she trembles and pleads with him and entreats him to let her move.

Her arguments aren’t very eloquent, because by that point rational thought is gone. “Please,” she whines on the verge of tears, _“please,_ Kylo. Make it good. Good for you. Pleeease. Be _so_ good.”

He likes it when she begs, she knows, because he pets her hair and kisses her and murmurs soothing nonsense against her skin. But he also likes it when she doesn’t: when she bites her tongue and lets her back seize and her leg muscles cramp before she’ll talk.

Tonight he takes pity on her. His fingers find sweat on her back, and her legs spasm on his, and he puts his phone down and he scoops up her thighs and draws her knees up to her chin. He wraps his arms around her shins, and she’s a compact package all folded up for him pressed against his chest. This way he can push his cock up into her with short thrusts. It would be embarrassing how quickly she cums, except that he fucks her through it and tells her how good she is: the very best pet, and his good girl, and she did so well to stay so still for him and he’s _so_ proud of her.

She’s not crying, it’s just that tears are streaming down her face. The tie bites into her legs. His arms are tight and hot around her, and they raise and lower her onto him. He fucks her like she’s his oversized fleshlight. And for a while, she is.

_What if I don’t like it?_

_We can stop anytime._

_What if you don’t like it?_

_What if I don’t like what?_

_Sex with me. What if I can’t be what you want?_

_There’ll be no hard feelings._

He holds her tight to him in that sweaty tearful bundle even after he cums inside her. He doesn’t pull out; he settles her firmly back down on him to the root. Usually he’d tell her how he wants to keep his cum inside her where it belongs, but this time he doesn’t talk. She wants him to. There are still tears leaking from her eyes, and she’d like something to distract from that slight inconvenience.

“Kylo?”

“Yes, pet?”

She swallows. “Did I do it well?”

He clenches her harder against him, until it hurts. “You were perfect. You did it the very best, my sweet pet.”

She lives as a warm ball on his cock for a couple minutes. Then she says, “Do you think you want to put me in your bed?”

She can hear his smile. “What a considerate idea. Would _you_ like to be put in bed?”

“I want what you want.”

_You could be doing this with someone who actually knows how to, you know._

_I know._

_Why don’t you?_

_Because I want you._

_Why?_

_Do you want to be wanted?_

_Yes._

_Then it doesn’t matter why, does it?_

He doesn’t fuck her again that night. He holds her and feeds her makes her cum on his fingers. She lies there soft and pliant, propped up on the pillows he arranged for her.

Soon he’ll open “her” drawer in his dresser and take out clothes for her to put on. He’ll put her folded dirty clothes in a dry-cleaning bag, and she’ll get dressed and he’ll walk her to the elevator and stand there with her until it comes, and then she’ll get in and he’ll look in her eyes until the doors close. She’ll have to start thinking for herself again soon.

But not quite yet.


	2. Chapter 2

His penthouse is always spotless. When he asks her to do dishes, or mop, or dust, she’s not really cleaning anything. It’s just pretend.

When she was five, she used to play house with the boy who lived in the trailer three down from theirs. There was a clearing not far away with a cluster of stumps. He would sit on one and smoke an empty pipe and pretend to read the newspaper while she filled a chipped teacup with pine needles and acorns and served it to him as his dinner. She would watch him pretend to eat as he told her about his pretend day at the office. None of their parents had an office job, or read a newspaper. Dinner was every man for himself. She doesn’t even remember when she saw it on TV: that perfect family, where the man works and the woman cooks and cleans and serves him.

It was only later that she realized that _she_ didn’t get any pine needles and acorns to eat. It still bothers her, because she deserved someone bringing her acorns too.

It bothers her less now. Because she has something better than acorns.

_Will you do chores if I ask you?_

_What, like clean your house? You don’t have someone who does that?_

_I do. But I’d like to watch you do it._

_So I’d what, vacuum while you watch?_

_Would you be okay with that?_

_What would you get out of that?_

_If you don’t want to do it, just tell me._

_No, I can. It’s not a big deal._

She doesn’t look at him when she cleans. She pretends he isn’t there. She’d worn a spaghetti-strapped white sundress today, at his request. With a belt. So when he silently plucked the straps from her shoulders and guided her arms out of them, the dress exposed her breasts but didn’t fall beyond her waist.

He didn’t touch her yet. She didn’t expect him to. He went over to the armchair and settled down to watch her. He loosened his tie. He might as well have pulled out a pipe and unfolded a newspaper. She smiled. He noticed, and his expression twisted into a question that she didn’t answer.

She drops to her hands and knees instead. She’d already filled up the bucket and readied the sponge before he got home. She starts at the edge of the kitchen island. She scrubs as vigorously as if there were really something to clean. Her tits jiggle, but she pays them no mind. She crawls forward into the wet spot, and the dress dampens under her knees. She sits back on her heels and wipes her forehead with the back of her wrist. The dirt may be make-believe, but the sweat is real.

When he lets her go for long enough without stopping, she almost forgets he’s there. It’s _her_ floor. Hers to make clean, and hers to walk barefoot on and smile in satisfaction at the sweat that her body made there.

He’ll make her sweat in a different way soon. But for now, she cleans.

_What are your hard limits?_

_What does that mean?_

_Things that you definitely don’t want me to do._

_I don’t know._

_Slapping, choking? Face fucking? Spanking? Anal?_

_Do you want to do all those things to me?_

_Yes._

She’s done about a third of the kitchen when her knees start to protest too loudly to ignore. She sits on the floor to take a break, groaning as she props herself up on her palms and stretches her legs straight out in front of her. The skirt of her dress, now with big wet splotches, twists up around her thighs. Sweat tickles the valley between her tits. Tendrils of hair escape her ponytail.

She chances a glance at him, just in time to see him get up from the chair. She watches, but he doesn’t come over to her. He unbuckles his belt as he walks to his bedroom.

His absence doesn’t change her instructions. She gets back on her tender knees and resumes scrubbing.

He approaches so quietly that she startles when he says, “Pet.”

She sits back on her heels, wincing involuntarily at the floor under her knees. She could tell him it hurts. She could say she wants to stop kneeling. She could use their safe word. But it doesn’t hurt badly enough that she wants to stop pretending for him.

When he comes to stand in front of her, she sees that he’s taken off his pants and shoes and is holding a folded towel. He sets it down on the floor in front of her. “Kneel on this,” he says, gruffly. He doesn’t call her _pet._ She doesn’t know if he’s talking to his pet or to Rey.

They both obey.

_Is it okay if we try something and I tell you to stop if I don’t like it?_

_Of course._

_Then yes. Fine._

_Fine what?_

_I’ll try those things you said._

_Which ones?_

_All of them._

“Is that better, pet?”

“Yes.” It is. His towel is the plushest thing her knees have ever felt.

“Good. You’ve been a good girl for me, haven’t you?”

She looks up at him and nods, waiting for what comes next. Her mouth waters in anticipation.

His boxer briefs are black, as all of his boxer briefs are. At least the ones she’s seen. Maybe he has a whole separate drawer of Saturday underwear. Maybe during the week he wears white, or navy, or heather grey. She can’t imagine him in anything other than black. But it doesn’t really matter what he does the rest of the week, because she’s only his on Saturdays.

He pulls his cock out slowly. If he went too quickly, it might look like he isn’t in control, and he needs them both to know that he is. (Or so she thinks—she doesn’t know how many of these things she imagines about him are true, and how many are just her mind trying to make believe that she knows him.)

He could grab her by the ponytail, tip her head back suddenly so her mouth opens in surprise, and stuff his cock in.

He doesn’t. She kneels on his towel on her floor.

_As long as we’re doing this, I won’t have sex with anyone else._

_Why not?_

_I’m not overburdened with leisure time. Saturdays are the one night a week I consistently have free._

_Oh._

_But you’re free to have other partners, of course._

_Of course._

Her body is tired. Not just from scrubbing: from the week. And the one before that, and the one before that, stretching back and back as far as she can remember. She’s never not been tired. At least he gives her a reason to be.

He walks a slow circle around her, cock jutting inches from her skin. She kneels placidly, tits bared for his inspection.

“Clasp your hands behind your back.”

She does.

He stalks another half circle. He stops behind her. Her skin prickles with anticipation.

When the sensation first comes, she thinks he’s running his fingertip along her shoulder. But it’s too thick to be his finger, too hot. She smiles when she realizes what it is. Because what other lover has ever thought to make her shiver with the tip of his cock caressing the back of her neck, as his is now? He takes her ponytail in one fist, but not to yank it back. He presses it forward, until her chin is an inch away from her chest and the nape of her neck is bared to him. So he can rub his cock over it, anointing her. Claiming her. Reminding her that all the square inches of skin on her body are his to use how he wants. And right now he wants to rub his cock up against her neck and over her shoulders, and she loves to be wanted.

She wonders if he could cum this way, just from the friction on the underside of his cock. He probably can’t. It’s probably not enough.

He walks around to come stand in front of her once more, and he trails his cock along the tender skin below her jaw.

She can barely stand it anymore, but neither can he, apparently, because he finally nudges her lower lip with his cockhead.

“Open your mouth, pet.”

She always forgets just how big his hands are until they’re locked around her skull.

_What if there’s a Saturday that I can’t make it?_

_Just let me know in advance._

_What about the weeks I’m on my period?_

_If you don’t feel well enough to come, then don’t come._

_No, I mean..._

_Do I mind the blood?_

_Yes._

_I want you every way._

It took her a while to train her mouth. Open wide enough to keep teeth safely away, with enough suction to hollow her cheeks, but with a relaxed tongue and throat. It used to be a lot to think about at once. Now the memory lives in her muscles, so she can spare enough attention to watch him.

He’s the one who’s controlling her; that’s the whole point. It’s his fingers caging her head and his thrusts that set the pace. His cock, her mouth, his whim. But to feel sexual pleasure is to be vulnerable, and he gives her his vulnerability. He lets her watch as his breath turns to uneven pants, and his hips push forward more insistently, and his eyes darken and he becomes more animal than man. Because pleasure makes men animals, and women feed them acorns.

The sounds they make together are wet and sloppy. Not the precise _swiff_ of sponge on floor, but irregular. Gulps and gags and squelches. The sounds escape her mouth the same way her saliva does: from the corners. His fingertips burrow into her skull and his head tips back and he waits until the very last second to pull out. Right before the point of no return. He steps back and pants and his cock bobs angrily at the indignity of having been denied the release her throat promised.

He says raggedly, “Put your hands on the floor.”

She’s too dazed for a moment to comply, and by the time she falls forward onto her hands, he’s already flipped up her skirt to her waist and landed a smack to her bare ass. She yelps. He doesn’t reprimand her for making noise. His hand cracks across her other cheek, and it quivers with the impact.

“Spread your knees farther, pet.”

She does. His voice is dark and jagged, and his control won’t hold for long. It’s just as well. It’s a long time from Saturday to Saturday.

_You seem smart._

_You make it sound like an insult._

_It isn’t. You seem like an intelligent person._

_I am. But I don’t think you mean that._

_What?_

_I think you mean “an intelligent woman.” I think you think I’m intelligent, for a woman._

_Why do you think that?_

_Am I wrong?_

The next spank lands squarely on her cunt. She cries out. His slaps are relentless and wet, and his palm resounds against her folds. She’s reduced to a moaning, trembling collection of cells waiting to cum or expire or be fucked, whichever comes first. Whichever he wants.

“Tell me how it feels,” he pants behind her.

She shakes her head. “Please,” she moans. Simply existing takes up too much effort.

“Do you want me to fuck you, is that it? Do you want a cock in your greedy little cunt, my pet?”

She nods vehemently enough that her ponytail bobs until suddenly there’s a hand locking it in place, and there’s a cheek next to hers.

“Say my name,” he whispers.

“Kylo,” she moans.

“Say it again.”

“Kylo.”

“Again.”

_“Kylo.”_

“Again.”

“Kyl—OH!”

The first thrust fills her to the brim. His cheek leaves hers so he can crouch in a feral squat and hold her hips like he held her skull and fuck her cunt like he fucked her mouth.

She sobs with relief. She drops to her elbows and arches her back and lets herself be the recipient of his fucking. She lets herself be fucked. She cums and doesn’t think and sobs and cums again, and he doesn’t stop. When she can’t hold her body up anymore, she collapses onto the floor and he follows her down, because he’s an animal and she’s a wet hole and his cock won’t be denied. He kneads both hands down into her ass and kneels astride her and fucks her until she screams her pleasure, and her muscles lock and her limbs writhe and still he fucks her.

“Oh, oh, oh,” she chants in a wet litany of sobbing bliss.

“Yes,” he mutters savagely. _“Yes._ You like that, pet? Take it. _Take it.”_

When he cums, he cums inside her. And he waits until it trickles out and he scoops it up with his finger and stuffs it back in.

She lies on the doubly-clean floor and bites her thumb and closes her eyes and smiles.

_Who are you, anyway?_

_What do you mean?_

_What do you do?_

_Does it matter?_

_It matters to me._

_I’m giving you my Saturdays, not my workweek._

_That’s fair. I suppose you are smart, for a woman._

_Very funny._

_I think I like you._

_Are you going to fuck me or what?_

He pulls his finger out so he can lie down on top of her and start kissing her neck. Her shoulders, her nape, everywhere his cock touched is reclaimed by a gentle mouth. Plus some other skin, like her shoulder blades, and her upper back, and the space behind her ear.

She doesn’t know if the kisses are meant for her or for him, but she’ll take them either way. She hums in quiet contentment, and he murmurs her name and presses an open-mouthed kiss to her spine.

Yes, her body likes Saturdays.

_Wait, is Kylo your real name?_

_In a manner of speaking._

_So that’s a no?_

_Does it matter?_

_Is that what you want me to call you? Not...I dunno, master, or something?_

_Do you want to call me master?_

_No._

_That was a very decided “no.” Why not?_

_Because of acorns._

_What does that mean?_

_Maybe I’ll tell you some day._

He’s the one who empties the bucket and washes the sponge and wrings it dry. She sits curled up in the corner of the sofa in her clean clothes and watches. She thinks about that trailer park and that boy. She hopes he ended up a not-awful person.

When Kylo walks her to the elevator, he doesn’t say anything. He never does. But when he looks at her as the doors close, the thought comes to her that if that boy turned out like this man, that would probably be all right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for your love and comments! I decided there might be some more to explore in this world after all.


	3. Chapter 3

She lets herself in with her key. It’s really his key, of course—he’s loaning it to her for as long as they’re making use of each other—but when he gave it to her he called it hers.

His penthouse never gets less big, or less empty. So much floor. She could stand on a different patch every day of the year and there would still be floor that she never used. She walks past Joe, who sleeps on the subway grate outside her building during the day because he’s scared to sleep at night, and she smiles and nods at him and she thinks of all that floor that someone built safe walls around for no one to use and she really fucking hates people sometimes.

  
  


_Do you own this place or rent it?_

_Own._

_How much did you buy it for?_

_That’s not a question that people ask._

_I just did._

_Twenty-eight million._

  
  


She starts scrubbing the bathtub, as he instructed, hoping the physical labor will take her out of her head. Because she can exist as a person in the world or she can be with him, but not both. She leaves herself at the door, except some Saturdays she clings.

So engrossed is she in her angry, vigorous scrubbing that she doesn’t hear him come in. She jumps when she glances over and he’s leaning in the doorway. _“Fuck._ Don’t scare me like that,” she snaps.

Sometimes she sasses him so he’ll punish her, but it’s been long enough that he can tell when it’s real.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she bites curtly, turning back to the bathtub.

He comes to stand behind her. She doesn’t turn around.

His voice is frustratingly calm. “Do you want to talk about this now, or after?”

She hates how well he can read her. And she loves it, but she doesn’t think about that part now. “After.”

“Do you want to do this?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“I just said yes.”

His voice is steel-grey velvet. “Then stand up, pet.”

  
  


_It doesn’t bother you? Spending that much money on thousands of square feet in the sky for one person?_

_Why would it? I can afford it._

_You become at least 23% less attractive to me when I think about how obscenely rich you are._

_You become at least twice as hot when you’re annoyed._

_One day I’m going to find a Dom who works for Greenpeace and has an apartment that’s shittier than mine, and I’m going to leave you._

_Don’t._

  
  


She stands facing the tub and the floor-to-ceiling window beyond, looking out over the grid of white and black that lies beneath them. She doesn’t turn around when he comes up behind her, or when he pulls down her shorts and picks her feet up out of them. He trails one hand back up her leg, then over her stomach. He presses her back against him and her breath catches. He never touches her so much so quickly. He bends forward to whisper in her ear. “Tell me you want it.”

She swallows and nods.

“Use your words, pet.”

“Yes, I want it.”

“Good.”

His hand is gone from her stomach, then, to pull the gusset of her panties aside so something wet can nudge her cunt. She fails to stifle her gasp.

With a practiced wrist, he breaches her entrance with the lubed dildo. It’s not as thick as his cock, nor as long, but it’s still a stretch.

“Tell me to stop,” his voice rumbles low.

She shakes her head.

“Tell me to stop,” he repeats, like distant thunder in her ear.

“No.”

The dildo is in. He pulls her panties back to hold it in place.

“Finish cleaning your bathtub, pet.”

  
  


_I can leave you if I want._

_I know. Do you want to?_

_I don’t know._

_What do you want, Rey?_

_I want there not to be rich people._

_What do you want that I can give you?_

  
  


The silicone cock inside her tilts back and forth rhythmically as she strains forward to reach the bottom of the tub. She sweats. She’s a blot on the pristine chill of the marble that cradles her. Too wet, too alive. With too much flesh, and blood besides. She scrubs.

He watches. She can see him through the reflection in the window, leaning against the white marble vanity shot through with veins of silver. Her veins are blue, except when they’re red. Cold and hot. Changeable. Not like the marble in its haughty pallor. It always leeches warmth, never gives. At least her flesh can give. The proof is in her cunt.

The outline of the end of the dildo will be visible to him through her underwear, she’s certain. She scrubs savagely, wishing she could scrub so hard the marble would waste away and wash down the drain. She’d scrub away this whole tower of glass and steel and he’d fuck her on the wreckage. Her muscles scream. So does she, but not with her mouth.

“Stand up,” he commands.

She stills. “I’m not finished.”

“I didn’t ask if you were finished. I told you to stand up.”

She sets her jaw. She’s not his pet. Not today.

  
  


_I’m not going to stop being angry, if that’s what you’re waiting for._

_You can be whatever you want._

_Don’t be nice to me._

_Why not?_

  
  


“Stand up,” he orders again, quietly.

She stays on her knees, draped over the side of the tub.

“You’re angry,” he observes, stalking toward her. “That’s good, pet. You can be angry at the world, or you can be angry at me. And I think I know which one you need. _Stand up.”_

He’s right behind her now. She doesn’t move. She watches him in the window: his wide shoulders, stuffed with money. He grabs her ponytail.

He doesn’t yank, he pulls steadily upward until her scalp smarts so much that she needs to rise. He grabs her arm and spins her around. She doesn’t cry out; she doesn’t give him the satisfaction. Let the lion tamer work for it. Her teeth haven’t been pulled.

He stares down at her and she stares back unwavering. His hands slide up her arms to her shoulders to her neck, and they linger and she thinks they’ll stay, but instead they continue their climb to her scalp. They worm their way into her hair, burrowing in at the sides. Her ponytail strains, but still his fingers thread in until her head is between his palms. Her head and no air. He could crush her. He won’t. She smiles.

Too quickly to anticipate, his hands are gone from her head. He’s bending over and his shoulder folds her in half at the waist and then the room is upside down. The dildo shifts. He holds both her ankles in one hand so she can’t kick as he carries her, but he can’t stop her struggling. She writhes silently, but so hard that she thinks she might break free and make him drop her. She’s won, hasn’t she? He’s letting her down—but no, it’s on his bed. Right where he wants her. He drops her with a bounce.

Half her hair is out of her ponytail. The dildo was partly dislodged in the struggle and strains against her panties. She hasn’t stopped sweating. She hasn’t stopped being human. She snarls.

He rips her panties away.

  
  


_Why did you think I didn’t want you to be angry?_

_You want a pet._

_I want you to pretend to be sweet and docile when you choose to. I know you’re not really._

_Are you saying I’m not naturally sweet?_

_Are you saying you are?_

_I guess I’ll give you that one._

  
  


He pulls the dildo out. She whines at the loss.

“Here’s what’s going to happen, _pet._ You’re going to cum at most one time tonight. Whether it happens one time or none is entirely up to you.”

She fumes.

“Which do you choose?” he asks, leaning over her on the bed. He’s close enough that she could headbutt him.

She doesn’t answer.

He slaps her thigh, hard. “Which one, pet?”

She could say _none._ She could use the safeword and get dressed and go home and smile to Joe as she passes him. But she doesn’t have any smiles left inside her—not a single one. And Joe deserves a smile. She can’t leave. So she lets her head fall to the side, and she spreads her legs and she says, “One.”

She doesn’t need to look at him to feel his smirk. “I thought you might say that, pet. Are you going to be good for me?”

She hides her head in the crook of her arm. Mostly from herself.

She nods.

  
  


_I don’t want someone naturally obedient. I want you to choose to give me your obedience, but only if you want to._

_Why are we talking about me all of a sudden?_

_We have been the whole time._

_No, we’re talking about how disgusting your wealth is._

_You never answered my question._

_What question?_

_What do you want from me?_

  
  


“Imagine a scale of zero to ten, where zero is no sexual pleasure and ten is an orgasm. Each time I say ‘tell me,’ you’ll tell me where you are on the scale.”

She hasn’t taken her head out from her elbow, so she isn’t prepared when the dildo nudges her clit. She jumps.

“Tell me.”

She swallows. “Two.”

“Good girl.” He pulls the dildo away.

She feels the bed dip between her legs as he settles in.

“I hope you don’t think you’re going to cum anytime soon, pet. You might wish you chose none after all.”

  
  


_I want you to think it’s fucked up that you paid twenty-eight million dollars for a place to live._

_I do, I bought at a bad time. It’s barely worth twenty-six._

_Kylo._

_Oh, too soon. Okay. I do think it’s fucked up._

_Why don’t you do something about it?_

  
  


“Tell me.” He’s barely penetrating her with the dildo, just the tip dipping into her to pull out and enter anew.

“Four.”

“You’re dripping, pet. You need this badly, don’t you?” She doesn’t answer. He slaps her thigh. _“Don’t you?”_

She still doesn’t look at him, so the _yes_ isn’t as much of an indignity. He pushes the dildo all the way in as a reward, and her hips buck to welcome it. He sets a brisk pace, squelching in and out, and when he says “tell me,” she says “six.”

“Hmm,” he muses, still fucking her with the dildo. “I don’t know if I believe you, pet. The way your feet are twitching so prettily for me, I think you might be closer to an eight. I think you might be trying to trick me into letting you cum.”

He pulls the dildo out, and she moans.

“Let’s try this again, shall we?”

  
  


_I give away half my income._

_To who?_

_Various charities my financial advisors deem worthy._

_Is it so you can pay less taxes?_

_In part, yes._

_That’s not good enough._

_I don’t know if you heard the part where I give away HALF my income._

_And you can still afford a twenty-eight million dollar condo._

_There’s no pleasing you, is there?_

_There is if you really want to._

  
  


She knows he knows she can cum from just penetration. She’s peaked on his cock probably a hundred times. She knows too that he knows just the way to work her clit to orgasm. And because he knows how to make her cum, he knows how _not_ to make her cum.

“Tell me.”

“Seven,” she pants, clenching around the silicone cock as he thrusts inside. She’s really an eight, but she can get away with underestimating by one. He can’t tell, surely. So why does he swat her thigh and pull the dildo out? She cries out in frustration.

“I can do this all night, pet.”

  
  


_Why half?_

_What?_

_Why not ninety percent?_

_That seems excessive._

_Why? Could you not live on ten percent of what you make?_

_I could. Probably._

_Then why don’t you?_

_Have I ever told you how irresistible you are when you’re belligerent?_

_Don’t change the subject._

  
  


Her legs twist in vain, chasing the peak that he won’t give her. She slung her arm over her eyes at some point, because it’s too much to have to look and feel at the same time.

“Tell me.”

“Seven. Please, Kylo.”

“A seven already, pet? I just put it in. Look how well your cunt is trained for me.” He pauses and jiggles the dildo inside her. “Tell me.”

“Mmm.”

_“Tell me.”_

“Eight.”

“An eight is almost a nine, and that’s almost a ten, and we can’t have that, can we?” He pulls out. Her feet claw at the sheets and she stifles a sob.

“Please, just let me cum.”

“I don’t think you’re nearly ready, pet. You can still put a complete sentence together.”

The dildo nudges her clit, and she arches up to meet it. When he pulls it away, her hips try to chase it. Her hands shoot out to grab at the sheets. _“Please.”_

He plunges the dildo back into her. There’s no resistance. It lives in her cunt now. “Tell me.”

“Seven,” she gasps.

He doesn’t even give her a dozen thrusts before he withdraws.

Her moan is inhuman.

“Look at me, pet.” He swats her thigh. _“Look.”_ She does. “Soon you’re going to get desperate. You’re going to want to put your hands between your legs and give yourself what I won’t. But you’re not going to do that. You know why?”

She shakes her head.

“Because if your hands so much as inch toward your throbbing red cunt, I’m going to catch them and pull them away. And if my hands are busy holding your disobedient wrists, that means they can’t be fucking you, now can they?”

She whimpers.

_“Answer me.”_

“No.”

“Good. I think maybe we’ve let your pussy calm down enough, what do you think?” He slides the dildo in slowly. “Tell me.”

“Six.”

“Good, pet.”

She thinks there used to be something she was mad about, but for now there’s only enough space in her mind for ten numbers and one dildo.

  
  


_You really want me to give away ninety percent of my income?_

_Yep._

_Why ninety?_

_Because you can afford it. Would you rather ninety-five?_

_No, ninety is plenty._

_You’re making fun of me._

_I would never make fun of you, Rey._

  
  


Her shirt has gotten twisted and pushed up under her arms from all the squirming.

“Why’re you doing this to me? Why won’ you— _fuck_ —let me cum?”

“Tell me.”

_“Eight.”_

“You don’t need to cum, pet. You need to be taught a lesson. Look how pretty pink your skin is, all quivering for me. Isn’t this better than cumming?”

She moans desperately.

“Tell me.”

_“Nine.”_

He pulls the dildo out. Her legs throw a tantrum without asking her, kicking the bed.

He smirks. “There’s a good pet.”

  
  


_I’ll do it._

_What?_

_I’ll give away ninety percent of my income this year._

_Why would you do that?_

_Because you asked me to._

_Just like that?_

_Yes._

  
  


“Gon’ lemme cum, ever?” she slurs hopelessly.

“Of course, pet. Did you doubt it?” He slides the dildo in. Sweat stings her eyes. “Tell me.”

“Eight.”

He takes it out. “Good.” He just barely touches it to her clit. Her muscles ache from trembling. “Tell me.”

“Eight.”

He slides it inside. “Tell me.”

She moans incoherently. He takes it out. “What was it, pet? Tell me.”

“Nine!” she gasps. “Lemme cum, pleeease, be so good!”

She doesn’t even realize her hand is nearly between her legs until his fingers lock around her wrist.

“Tsk, tsk,” he clucks, pulling it away. “What did I say, pet?”

She sobs. Her feet scramble for friction. Her head thrashes back and forth, and now both of her wrists are caught in his massive hand, and there’s a distant noise that could be a zipper, and he’s lying down on her, and why would he do that, where’s the dildo, she needs the dildo, if he can just put it in one more time she’d cum, but then he’s taken pity on her after all, hasn’t he? Because there’s something new nudging at her nether lips, and it’s not the dildo, it’s bigger and hotter and he lets go of her wrists and she starts to cum before he’s even all the way buried inside her.

His thrusts are jerky and slow, impeded by how tightly her cunt clenches his cock, and her hands grab fistfuls of sheet and hair and shirt, and her legs vibrate with denied pleasure, and some distant voice in the back of her head keeps saying that it must end eventually, but it doesn’t, he keeps fucking her and her eyes glaze over and there are inhuman noises coming from a mouth that used to be hers. She writhes, trying to get away from the pleasure, but her body can’t stop cumming. When the spasms have just barely started to weaken, she feels a thumb on her clit and her muscles jerk anew, carrying her on new waves, and it’s all she can do to keep her head above water. Her lungs have forgotten what air is, and she’s writhing, crying, drowning in _this._ Her eyes find his and she watches helplessly as he reads her face, hearing what she doesn’t have the air to say: _ten, oh God, oh fuck, ten, ten, Kylo, yes, fuck, ten._ Tears leak from her eyes. Her back arches so hard that her hips jerk off the bed, forcing his cock deeper inside. She’s struggling for little shards of air, anything to sustain her until she becomes human again. She didn’t know her body could do this; she _doesn’t_ know if her body can do this or if she’s lost consciousness and dreamed a never-ending orgasm.

“Kylo,” she finds enough air to moan, “Yes. Oh.” She might say more if he hadn’t started fucking her again, and rubbing firm circles on her clit that say _You’re not done until I say you’re done, pet._ She convulses again, crying out for mercy. She has nothing left. He’s spent hours saturating a rag of bliss inside her, and now he wrings out every drop.

It’s gradual when he stills. There’s no more thumb on her clit, and there’s still a cock inside her, but it’s not thrusting anymore, it’s just _there,_ letting her cunt squeeze it through the residual flutterings. She can breathe, and she does—heaving pants that clear the edges of her vision and turn her blood red again. He’s still on top of her, propped on elbows, looking down at the destruction he wrought. She turns her head to the side so she can touch the tears that lie there without lifting her hand. Her heart beats in her neck. Still the leftover twitches come, fluttering around his cock and curving her lips.

Finally she’s herself, enough to look up at him.

He smiles. “Is that better?”

She laughs a throaty chortle and rests her hands on his shoulders. “You’re impossible.”

“I don’t hear you complaining.”

“I’m literally complaining right now.”

His smile is soft and so is hers, and she doesn’t know what they are. He’s still hard inside her, it’s not finished yet, but he’s not calling her his pet, and she’s not answering as if she is. She’s Rey again; it’s like aftercare started early. She wraps her legs around his hips and he groans at the change in angle.

“Where do you want me to cum?”

She grins mischievously. “Who said I want you to cum?”

“Fuck,” he pants. “I should spank you red for this.”

“Why are you asking me? Tell me where you’re going to cum.”

He’s taken aback for a minute, and blinks like he’s remembering himself. “Gonna cum on my pet’s soft, pretty stomach.”

She dutifully spreads her legs so he can pull out of her red, used hole: used by his dildo, and barely by him. He commandeers her sweaty hand and presses a kiss to her palm before he guides it down to his soaked cock, but he doesn’t leave her to do the work. He wraps her hand around his shaft and covers it with his own and slides hers back and forth, and she can lie there limply and let him use her hand to jerk himself off. Her hand isn’t small, but when it’s wrapped in his it feels tiny. His orgasm arrives quickly, and she smiles at the throbbing in her hand and the hot spend on her skin and his eyes that never leave his hand and hers.

He rolls off her and brings her part of the way with him, so he’s on his back and she’s on her side with a leg slung over his. How they usually end up for aftercare, when they finish in his bed.

“Okay, what’s wrong?”

  
  


_This can’t be some kind of quid pro quo. I’m not going to do anything different because you’re giving away more money. You can’t hold it over me to convince me to do something you want that I don’t._

_Do you really think I would do that?_

_No._

_Then why did you say it?_

_There’s never not strings._

_Rey, I swear. There are no strings._

_Oh._

_Okay?_

  
  


She nods slowly. “Okay.”

He reaches for her hand to shake, like it means something: a seven-figure handshake in a sex-soaked bed.

He gets her fresh clothes from the drawer. He brings them over to where she sits on the edge of the bed. He doesn’t touch her, because they don’t touch once he gets up to get her clothes. He dresses while she goes to the bathroom and puts her clean clothes on.

She used to tell him that he doesn’t need to walk her to the elevator, but she stopped saying it because he always does. And right before the doors close, he smiles at her. A hopeful, encouraging thing.

She gives it to Joe when she gets home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Really enjoying having this self-indulgent fic to write whatever I feel like. My current plans for the next three chapters are anal cockwarming on a conference call, Rey on top, and period sex.
> 
> (And yes, I am on twitter, and I’m very much enjoying your thirst. 😊 This chapter goes out to @infintgalaxies.)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that new tags are added for each chapter! This chapter contains anal. If you prefer not to read, see the end note for a synopsis.

She’s been teasing him during aftercare almost from the very beginning. About his hair care routine, or the hideous art on his walls, or his standing desk. Especially his standing desk. It’s a way to equalize them. To say,  _ you’re not better than me just because you’re obscenely rich. _ To say,  _ I’ll take it during sex but I’ll dish it out the rest of the time. _

It took him aback at first. He thought she was really criticizing him, and his brow furrowed thoughtfully. She had to teach him how to laugh at himself. It seemed late in life for a grown man to learn, but he did. At least with her. She doubts he would let anyone else poke fun at him like she does. She used to wonder if he really liked it or if he tolerated it because that’s what she needs. His aftercare is touch, hers is talking. She takes his cock in every hole; he can take her jokes.

He doesn’t just tolerate it, she decides finally. The crinkles by his eyes are real.

  
  


_ I’m not that old. _

_ Whatever you say, old man. _

_ Could an old man fuck you the way I just did? _

_ Hmm, maybe I’ll stop by the nursing home tomorrow and find out. _

_ You’re going to pay for this next Saturday, you know. _

_ Because you need a week to recover. I get it. _

_ You’re infuriating. _

_ Then why are you smiling? _

  
  


“I still have more work to do,” he informs her curtly as he comes in the door. “I didn’t get it all done at the office.” She’s dusting the bookcase like he told her.

She pauses and turns to face him. “Okay,” she replies uncertainly. “Are we not starting yet?”

His eyes darken as they take her in. She’s wearing a mustard romper. He’d let her decide what to wear, this time, and she chose a mustard romper because it makes her happy. It’s not particularly sexy. There’s a drawstring that cinches the waist, but the top hangs baggy over her torso. He sets his briefcase down.

“Come here, pet.”

Could she have worn a potato sack? She thinks as she dutifully approaches him that maybe he’s conditioned to be turned on by the act of unlocking his door on Saturday evening, knowing that she’s inside. She stands still and lets him undress her. His big fingers stumble over the delicate buttons and fumble with the drawstring, but he succeeds, and soon she’s naked. As she should be. He stands there in a suit and she stands there bare, and she feels naked to the superlative degree.

He brazenly palms the bulge in his pants. “You’re gagging for it, aren’t you, my pet?”

He’s projecting. But that doesn’t mean he’s wrong.

  
  


_ You work too much. _

_ If I wanted someone to nag me, I’d get married. _

_ Please be more misogynistic right now. _

_ Oh. You’re right. _

_ Seriously, Kylo, no one should have to put on a suit and go to the office six days a week. _

_ You love my suits. _

_ I’ve never said that. _

_ You don’t have to, I can tell. _

_ You do too want someone to nag you. _

  
  


He checks his watch. “I have a conference call in five minutes.”

They could both cum in five minutes, and he seems like he might be impatient enough to make that happen. No teasing, for once—just his cock and her cunt and a matching pair of orgasms barreling hard and fast. He draws a ragged breath and puts his hands on her. Stroking up and down her arms, first, then her sides. Brushing the edges of her breasts with his thumbs. Sliding around to her back to press her against him: tanned skin on black wool. Italian craftsmen made his, but she made hers all by herself. She smiles quietly as he ruts against her, humping her abdomen through the layers that divide them. His hands cup her ass as he grinds roughly. He’s wild. Undone. Maybe this is the inevitable effect of late-stage capitalism: when you make a man use up all his patience working seven days a week, he doesn’t have any left for the small, warm cocksleeve who cleans his house.

If he could bore a hole in her skin from the force of his thrusts, he would. Make a new opening in her body for his.

If he could crawl inside her uterus and live there, he would. He’d never say it, but she knows.

“Fuck,” he curses brokenly, and ruts into her harder. “My good little pet. So sweet for me. Need you.”

“You need to get on your conference call,” she says softly.

“Fuck my conference call.”

She cups his face impetuously in both hands, and he stops humping her from the shock. “Get on your call, Kylo. I’ll be here.”

He’s dazed for a moment, like her hands on his face are too much for him to feel if he needs to think at the same time. He collects himself quickly. “I need you to do something for me while I’m on my call, pet.”

“Okay.”

“I have something I need you to keep warm.”

  
  


_ Has anyone ever told you that you take yourself too seriously? _

_ No. _

_ Well, they’re thinking it. You should’ve had an older sister to tell you these things. You didn’t have an older sister, did you? _

_ No. _

_ Hmm, that was the first problem. And now I bet you have, like, one coworker who you think of as a friend, but he’s too intimidated by you to tell you that you’re allowed to loosen up. You need real friends, Kylo. _

_ Why? I have you. _

  
  


“You want to... during your call?” They’ve discussed exhibitionism in the context of fucking with the blinds open, but there’s a difference between a far-away couple in an anonymous penthouse and a camera two feet away.

“Yes, pet. I want you under my standing desk, warming my cock for me like a good girl.”

She flushes at the wrongness of it. But wrong doesn’t exist between them, just wanting and not wanting. She nods, and he lets her go with a soft slap to her hip. “Get the lube.”

“I don’t need it,” she says quickly, “I’m wet enough already.”

His grin scorches. “Oh, pet. What makes you think I was talking about your pussy?”

  
  


_ Do you know exactly what goes into prepping for anal, anyway? _

_ No. _

_ You’re lucky I like you enough to do it. It’s kind of a hassle. _

_ I know. _

_ You know it’s a hassle? _

_ I know I’m lucky that you like me. _

  
  


He knows exactly how far he needs to spread his feet with his legs straight so that his cock is level with her holes when they’re both standing. What a thing to know, she sometimes thinks. No one else knows that about her. The filthiest version of intimacy.

When she comes back from his bedroom with the lube, he’s already on his call. Standing legs apart the requisite distance, waiting for her to take his cock out of his pants so she can put it somewhere else instead. His eyes dart to her for the barest second before snapping back to the screen. She shivers.

She approaches and ducks under the desk, careful to stay well out of the camera’s frame. She wonders what they’d think—all those self-important executives—if they knew about the naked woman unzipping Kylo’s fly. They’d probably pretend to be shocked and horrified but deep down they’d be turned on. Fuck them all.

She kneels. He didn’t say she could blow him, but he’s so far away and not available to give permission anyway, and his naked cock is right here, and she can’t resist the urge to leave a quick, open-mouthed kiss on the tip. His hips jerk but his voice doesn’t falter. She could suck him in balls deep and swallow and swallow and swallow again until her lungs screamed for air and her throat preened at the cream she won from him. But he didn’t say she could, and more than she wants her tongue on the vein on the underside of his cock—the one that seems to have been especially designed for the enjoyment of anyone who gets to give him oral, and her cunt adds wetness to wetness at the thought that it’s only her, she’s the only one that he trusts with this cock and this vein—she wants to obey him. So she pops the top of the lube open with a plastic click, and she drizzles it over him, catching what threatens to drip with her hand and using it to thoroughly coat his shaft. He’s not talking on the call now; someone else is. Probably just as well. She squeezes his cock and smiles a secret, under-the-desk smile.

_ You should get more sleep. The CDC recommends seven hours a night. _

_ What makes you think I don’t sleep seven hours? _

_ Do you? _

_ No. _

_ See, I was right. I usually am. You should get used to it. _

_ Oh, I am, believe me. _

It won’t be easy to work him inside without his having opened her up first. He usually does it with probing pointer fingers that hook and coax and stroke and spread until her muscles let him in.  _ Remember us? _ his fingers say to her hole.  _ Remember the cock that owns you? _ It always relents. She takes a generous dollop of lube on her finger and kneels back so she can spread it on and around her own hole. It will be tight. He must have known that. He must have an exceptionally high opinion of his self-control. She doesn’t necessarily disagree.

She stands slowly, staying crouched so she doesn’t hit her head on the desk. She turns around and straightens her legs so she’s bent at the hips. There’s a bar on the underside of his desk that she grabs onto with the hand not slippery with lube. She reaches behind her with the other and finds his cock. It’s hard and hot and pulsing, and she wants it inside her. Good thing that’s what he wants too. Now it’s just up to her hole to decide.

  
  


_ The art by the closet looks like a dick. _

_ Maybe you just have a dirty mind. _

_ Excuse me, you’re one to talk! Where did you get it? _

_ I bought it at a gallery opening. _

_ You stood around drinking champagne with other rich people and admired it and no one said, hey, are we really not going to acknowledge that this one is clearly a cock and balls? _

_ If you’d been there you could’ve warned me not to get it. _

_ Oh, I never said I didn’t like it, just that it looks like a dick. I happen to like dicks. _

_ You’re filthy. _

_ You love it. _

_ You don’t even know. _

  
  


The first brush of his tip against her ass makes her pucker, even though she expects it. Even though she’s the one nudging it against herself, like he’s no more than a dildo stuck to a shower wall. If he were less hard it wouldn’t work. She braces herself against the bar she’s holding and grabs him more firmly and takes a deep breath, so when she pushes back onto him there’s nothing for her hole to do but let his cockhead in, with a sudden stretch that pulls a gasp from her. He covers up the hitch in his voice with a slight cough. There’s less than an inch of him inside, but her hole clenches in outraged, surprised protest at the intrusion. She bites her wrist to keep from moaning. It’s too much, too tight, too new, too  _ good. _ She steadies her trembling legs with a breath and sets herself to the task of working backwards onto him.

He doesn’t help her. That’s the first thing she notices when she grips his shaft and does her best to wiggle back onto it. He could push forward unobtrusively, help burrow inside, but he’s granite. Like he killed a boar and then demanded that it impale itself on the spit. She sets her jaw. She’ll be his boar.

She takes a minute to run her finger along her hole where it stretches around him, soothing it into compliance. She likes it. She spreads more lube from his shaft onto her entrance, and she touches herself until her muscles relent enough for her to dip the very tip of her finger inside her along with his cock. His hand claps onto her hip. She hopes he’s sweating.  _ She  _ is.

Her back is complaining at the position, and her neck grows sore with the effort of holding her head up, but she’s stronger than her body, so she grits her teeth and grabs the bar with her lubed hand too and pushes herself back and back. She always forgets exactly how long his cock is until it’s all the way inside her. The last inch takes her by surprise. She whimpers and takes a break to gather her strength to go that final stretch until his balls brush her folds and she huffs a silent, satisfied chuckle.

She did it. What a good girl.

  
  


_ How do you know this isn’t some elaborate form of corporate espionage? _

_ What, you’ve been sleeping with me for the past six months solely to get information? _

_ Hmm, I don’t remember the sleeping. _

_ You know what I mean. If that’s the case, you’re pretty bad at it. _

_ First of all, how dare you question my corporate espionage skills. _

_ Okay, tell me one thing you’ve learned about my business. _

_ It’s morally reprehensible. _

_ One thing you didn’t already gather the first time you saw this condo. _

_ Um, I’ll get back to you. _

  
  


He drones on above her about things that don’t matter, and if his voice is slightly more strained than usual, his colleagues don’t comment on it. What does the upcoming merger matter compared to the fact that his cock is entirely in her ass right now? The thrill doesn’t wear off: a part of him is in her body. The fact that she was made with little holes for him to use. With heat and wetness and clenching muscles, all so his cock will like it inside. She inadvertently moves forward a half inch as she shifts her weight, tugging him along, and both of his hands grasp her hips and draw her back with him. She grabs on to the bar for dear life. She’d forgotten in the effort of fitting him inside that this part would come after: the waiting. Harder than the penetration that came before.

She sucks her lower lip into her mouth and thinks about what she can do while she waits. He can’t see her. She brushes her thumb over one of her nipples and gasps a grin at her own disobedience. He didn’t say she could, but he didn’t say she couldn’t. What else hasn’t he forbidden?

Her hand slides down her stomach to the wet place between her thighs. She doesn’t dare put a finger in her cunt; his cock would feel it. But she slides carefully through the wetness and drags some of it up to play with her engorged bud. He can have her asshole. This is  _ hers. _

She traces slippery circles around her clit and bites her lip to keep from moaning. Her legs cramp with the effort of standing, but her fingers help her forget. She wonders if he would be able to tell if she came like this. He would, of course, but it doesn’t stop her from pretending that she might get away with it. She takes a silent, trembling breath, relaxes the hole where he throbs, and increases the pressure on her clit. She’d like a finger to bite down on, but one hand is busy between her legs and the other is maintaining its death grip on the bar that steadies her. She keeps her mouth shut through the sheer force of will, and swallows breaths that never become moans.

Her cunt ripples, and his fingertips dig into her hips in a warning.

He knows. But her orgasm is almost in reach. She doesn’t stop.

  
  


_ I notice you never find anything to complain about when it comes to my body. _

_ Oh, would you like me to? _

_ Some have observed in the past that I’m too strong. Or my dick is too big. _

_ Your head is too big, that’s for sure. _

_ Not with you around to deflate it for me. _

_ Only on Saturdays. I shudder to think about the rest of the week. _

  
  


Her fingers work furiously to take her there. To give her what she wants, obedience be damned. She can’t stay entirely silent, but at least her breath just comes in pants, not moans. One of her feet curls up off the floor, and when her knee bends she thinks her foot will brush against his leg before she remembers his wide stance. She constricts around him and whimpers. She’s distantly aware of people talking. Her back bumps the underside of the desk as her muscles seize. It’s too late to stop if she wanted to.

It’s not the same, taking an orgasm from him. Her legs still shake and her cunt still spasms and his cock in her ass reminds her that it’s not just her cunt that squeezes. She locks him in and her fingers work herself through the forbidden peak with sweat and straining and shuddering. Her ears ring with the ecstasy. And when she comes down they ring still, with the silence.

Wait, the silence?

“Who told you you could cum?” His voice is gravel dragged over concrete.

She shivers. “No one.”

“Your cunt is mine. Your ass is mine. Your clit is mine. Every single piece of your body is mine.” He pulls his cock out of her, and she cries out. “Go get on the bed. Lying on your stomach.”

She scurries to obey, not even chancing a glance back at him as she ducks out from beneath the desk. She lies face-down on his duvet with her arms snuggled beneath her, trying to make herself as small as possible. She crosses her ankles. Her ears prick for any sign of him, but she doesn’t hear him. She waits for what he’ll do to her. She yearns for him. She hides her face in the duvet, because she doesn’t  _ yearn. _ She’s not herself. She’s just a body on a bed, playing hide and seek. And if she can’t see him, he can’t see her.

The only warning a split second before the spank is how the bed dips as he climbs on. She yelps quietly and muffles it in the duvet. Another crack ripples her other cheek. She doesn’t make a sound. Her foot twitches.

“I thought I had you trained so well, pet.”  _ Spank. _ “I thought you were going to be good and do as I said.”  _ Spank. _ “But you got greedy, didn’t you.”  _ Spank.  _ “Answer me.”

She nods. He grabs her ponytail and yanks her head back.

_ “Answer me.” _

“Yes.” Her asscheeks smart, and her scalp strains, and she trembles at how much she loves it. “Yes, Kylo.”

He spanks her again, harder, and she cries out. “It’s my own fault, pet. I obviously haven’t trained you well enough. Your little fingers were too impatient.” Another spank. She can feel the red that paints her quivering skin. His hand lets her hair go, and her head falls back to the bed.

She hears the cap of the lube bottle open, and he spreads her cheeks roughly with one hand as he squeezes. The liquid splatters in her crevice, already wet with lube and wanting.

He drops the bottle on the bed and she can feel his weight shift, but she doesn’t know where he is: beside her, above her, astride her, he could be anywhere. He’s everywhere.

His hands spread her cheeks, and his cock is inside before she can draw breath. He doesn’t give her time to adjust, just trusts to the lube to ease his way into muscles that haven’t had the chance to remember his girth. Her eyes bulge and her mouth gapes, and he’s kneeling astride her, fucking her ass with ferocity and without warning. He doesn’t owe her any warning, because it’s his. Why should he ask permission to fuck something of his? She lies on his bed and pants into his duvet and exists for him.

“Mine.” Can he read her thoughts? The slap of his pelvis against her used asscheeks punctuates the words. “All. Fucking. Mine.” He pulls his cock out suddenly, and she drools a moan, and he hooks into her hole with both thumbs. He spreads it for his eyes’ pleasure. She’s never felt so exposed.

He plunges his cock back in, with his thumbs still holding her open. She moans an animal’s moan. He takes it out.

His voice strains. “Need you.” He thrusts in again, his cock rubbing between his thumbs. He pulls out. “Fuck, pet.” He fucks her again, one tantalizing thrust at a time. “Need you to need me.”

Before she can understand words, he pulls his thumbs out and slides his cock back inside and lies down on her like a blanket. She whimpers at the change in angle. At first she thinks he’s pulling her hair, but no: he’s tugging off the band that holds her ponytail. Her hair falls over her neck, and her face is still buried in the duvet so she doesn’t have to watch as he reaches underneath her to extract her hands so he can spread her arms out wide, like a snow angel, and hold her wrists and lay his arms on hers like the rest of his body on her body. She almost forgets that he’s inside her until he pins her legs down with his and starts fucking her, achingly slowly.

There’s no part of her body that’s not held down by his. She tries to laugh but sobs instead. So heavy, so warm, so safe. He buries his nose in her hair and slides in and out of her ass, and she can just lie there and feel and be for him. Be his sweet, wet pet. Be a hole. Be a body for him to pin down.

“So good.” He sounds as broken as she feels. Her flesh yields to the press of his hips, again and again and again. “Fuck.” She can feel him trembling. “Fuck.”

She weeps through her orgasm. She shudders and twitches and hides from him, but he sees her anyway and carries her through it, with hands on her wrists and lips on her neck. When she stills, limp and used, she thinks he’ll keep fucking her, but he pulls out and partly rolls off her and she can hear the wet  _ shlick  _ of hand on cock and he only buries himself back inside her with a soft grunt to leave his cum there.

She turns her head to the side when she finally needs air. He’s waiting with a hand to stroke her tear-flushed cheek.

His voice is anxious. “That wasn’t too much, was it?”

She gathers up all the air she can hold and buries her face back in the duvet. She shakes her head so he won’t worry.

  
  


_ You don’t mind it, do you? That I give you a hard time. _

_ No, I don’t mind. _

_ You would tell me if you did? _

_ Probably not. _

_ Kylo. _

_ I want you to be happy. _

_ That’s not what I was asking. _

_ I fucking love it when you give me a hard time. _

_ Really? _

_ Yeah. _

_ Why? _

_ I don’t know. _

  
  


He rolls off of her eventually, and his cock slides out and she whimpers.

She stays lying on her stomach because she doesn’t have the strength for anything else. He lies on his side beside her and rests his hand on her back. She knows it’s not enough touch for him, so she feebly pushes herself up so she can move to her side beside him. He hums in satisfaction when she slings her leg over his, and he puts his arm around her.

He holds her like holding her is more than just a way to make himself feel better for degrading her. She wouldn’t be able to explain it if anyone asked, but it feels like more. She builds a wall of words between them.

“It really is ridiculous to have a standing desk, you know.”

He smiles. “It clearly has its uses.”

“I’m pretty sure yours aren’t what the manufacturer recommends.”

His arm is warm around her. “They should, it would increase sales.”

She doesn’t have a quippy comeback. Why doesn’t she have a quippy comeback?

He notices. “Are you okay?”

She nods. He’s not convinced.

“Is there something I shouldn’t have done? Or should?”

“No, it was good.”

“I’m sorry, I should have negotiated the conference call thing in advance—”

She covers his mouth with her hand. “I liked it. All of it. A lot.” She removes her hand slowly, letting her fingers drag over the lips that have never touched hers.

His eyes darken, and she thinks she made a mistake. They’re not supposed to turn each other on during aftercare. But he doesn’t do anything, even when the corded muscles in his arm strain. There’s a defiant vulnerability in his face when he says, “I like you.”

She grins and waggles her eyebrows. “You should. I’m pretty great.”

He doesn’t smile back.

Her wall of words crumbles a little more every Saturday, and every Saturday she builds it back up.

She’s good at fixing things.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So far this fic has been an opportunity for me to try my hand at writing these kinks without worrying about minor details like a plot. I’m torn between keeping it that way for a while longer and starting to narratively move towards the 6k words of conflict and feelings I have drafted for future chapters. So I don’t really know how it will go in the short term, but thank you for sticking around and for your love! L_awlietxoxx, I hope you enjoyed these snippets of aftercare. 😊
> 
>  _Non-explicit synopsis:_ (If you’re comfortable reading selected parts, feel free to read the first section, all the italicized dialogue portions, and the last section to avoid anal.) Ben’s aftercare is touch, and Rey’s is talking. She likes to give him a good-natured ribbing about things like his standing desk, his modern art, his age, and his obscene wealth. She uses words to build a wall between them and to try to diffuse their growing intimacy that he tries to broach but she won’t acknowledge.
> 
>  _Edited to add:_ Oh, and I made an anon [Twitter account](https://twitter.com/TiedFic). 😊


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [@dachenabritta](https://twitter.com/dachenabritta) on Twitter made two gorgeous pieces of art for this fic: [anal cockwarming](https://twitter.com/dachenabritta/status/1310146185118711808) and [title cover](https://twitter.com/dachenabritta/status/1310167088485396480)
> 
> Please continue to check the new tags! See the end notes for summary/content information—feel free to read it prior to the chapter with any concerns.

Her clothes are on the kitchen floor. She’s in the guest bedroom. Her heart is in her throat.

“Come here, pet.”

Her body is long trained to obey. She stops between his feet.

He runs a thoughtful hand over her bare hip. “Do you like being naked? With me?”

She bites her lip. “Yes,” she whispers.

He looks up at her. “I didn’t hear you, pet.”

She clears her throat. “Yes, I like it.”

“Why do you like it?” His eyes scorch.

She can’t look straight at him for too long, or she’ll be burned. Her eyes fix on the pillow over his shoulder. “So you can use me how you want. My body. With nothing in the way.”

His hand slips around to the back of her thigh, just skimming the bottom of the swell of her ass. “That’s a lovely answer, my pet. I’m very pleased with you.”

Her heart throbs in her throat. She swallows around it with difficulty.

“Turn around.”

She does. It’s only then that she realizes that he chose his seat on the bed to align exactly with the full-length mirror on the wall four feet away. She waits for his next instruction and in the meantime she watches herself be naked.

Arousal becomes her. A rosy flush paints her cheeks and neck and creeps down to her chest. Even her blood comes up to welcome him. Her nipples stand proudly erect, and she can’t see her clit but if she could it would be too. It’s not just he who gets hard for her. She returns the favor. She watches herself and her lips part and her pupils stretch. Her hands itch to touch herself. She is heat. She is sex.

“Kylo?” she asks meekly, without permission.

“Hmm?” His thumbs have found the small of her back, and the dimples that exist for him there. His fingers have pressed into them so many times it’s like he’s trying to deepen them for him, to wear her flesh away to make deeper pools for his cum. For when he can bear to leave it somewhere other than inside her.

“Do you like it when I’m naked?”

His thumbs press. “Yes, my pet.”

She swallows. “Why, please?”

He chuckles jaggedly, with a dip in his breath that holds wanting. “Oh, my sweet, darling pet.” He leans forward and captures her ass in his teeth, mouth open wide, like a python trying to swallow her whole. She yelps in surprise. He shushes her soothingly and laves his tongue over the marks. “This is the only thing of yours that’s mine too.”

She can see in the mirror when her eyebrows pull together and the skin between them crinkles. “What is?”

“Your nakedness.”

When did she begin trembling? The mirror shows her the quavers in her hands, the shiver in her shoulders. “Oh.” She hears the zipper of his fly behind her, the clink of a belt and the rustle of boxers. “Kylo?”

“What is it, pet?”

“Why don’t you ever undress, too?” He doesn’t need to tell her. It’s his pet asking, not Rey. If Rey wanted to know, she would ask him after, when they exchange little gifts of truths wrapped up in words. She doesn’t want to know. _Would you like me to undress, pet?_ That’s what he’ll say. Deflect it back to her. Or maybe _I thought you liked my suits, my sweet pet._ Maybe he’ll just bite her again. Remind her that it’s only his indulgence that lets her delay with talking whatever he has in mind for her.

“Don’t ask me that.” His arms are sudden around her hips, and she gasps as he clings to her and buries his face in her back. “Don’t ask me that.”

When her hand strokes his arm, it’s through the shirt. His face is on her back, but she can’t give his skin hers here, just her warmth and her pressure. She looks in the mirror and strokes his arm and pretends she’s not playing with fire.

  
  


_Do you know what sub drop is?_

_No._

_After sex, you might feel sad or angry or depleted._

_Why?_

_It takes something out of you, being used. Even when the Dom is careful to take your experience into account. Which I will._

_I’ll be fine._

_You don’t know that._

  
  


He releases her as abruptly as he grabbed her. She staggers backward a little, until her legs hit the bed.

He breathes heavily. “Sit on my lap, pet.”

She lowers herself down without looking back, reaching for his thighs to help her find her way. His cock is trapped in the cleft of her ass as she settles onto him. He cradles the back of her head and guides it to one side, so it can nestle beside his. So when she looks in the mirror, it’s not just her and her nakedness she sees. It’s his face too. And for all that she’s looked at her body, there’s still looking left to do, and he’ll do it, his eyes swear.

“Lean back against me,” he murmurs, and she relaxes into his heat and crisp fabric. “Put your feet up on my knees.”

She freezes at that, and only complies slowly. _Indecent,_ a voice in the back of her head whispers. _Obscene._ How many times will she need to tell it to leave them alone? At least once more.

It would be precarious, her perch anchored by just her rear and the arches of her feet on his knees, except for how big and broad and solid he is. He won’t let her fall. His body itself is her promise. He spreads his knees slowly, so her legs spread. He slides his feet apart and she watches her labia unfold for them. She whimpers softly.

“Look at that.” His voice is low and reverent in her ear. “Look at you.” She does. “This is my favorite body, pet. Look at how good it is.”

Her breath flutters.

“Such good arms,” he kisses her shoulder, “to hold onto me with. Such good tits to be in my mouth. Such strong muscles.” His hands haven’t left the bed beside them since she sat down. “You’re so strong, my pet. That’s how I can fuck this little body as hard as I want and know it won’t break. You won’t break.”

His voice mesmerizes. She watches herself through a faraway haze.

“Such good hips, to spread wide for me. Your hips are trained very well, pet. They know to open up to let me in. Where I belong, hmm?” His teeth graze her earlobe. “Because what’s waiting there for me?”

She swallows hard. It comes out as the barest whisper. “My cunt.”

“Exactly.” She doesn’t know if it’s her imagination or if his cock throbs. “A little pink opening, just waiting for me. But it’s not a hole.”

“It’s not?” she answers wonderingly.

He shakes his head. “When I’m not there, it closes up. There isn’t a gap inside you where air is. You’re whole without me.”

Her eyes lift to his for the first time. They’re waiting for her. Why does he look so sad? He doesn’t need to be sad. That’s what she wants to tell him. But he goes on. She looks away hurriedly, back at herself.

“How lucky it was that this body was designed with that opening, though. Because my favorite thing in the world is to put something in it.” His hands grasp her ankles and draw them back until her legs are folded beside his on the bed. So she can support a little of her own weight when his hands snake underneath her to lift her up enough that his cock springs free. “What do I like to put in it, pet?”

He doesn’t wait for her answer. He impales her, and her eyes roll back in her head.

“No,” he growls. “Watch.”

One of his forearms supports her rear and the other wraps around her midsection, so she has something to cling to as she watches helplessly, mouth agape. He lifts her and settles her down slowly, and she watches rapt as he disappears inside her. The greatest magic trick of all.

He kisses the corner of her jaw. She whimpers and clutches at his sleeve as the arm around her middle loosens. His hand travels down to the place where they’re joined. “Look.” His fingers play through her folds, stroking them, spreading them, letting her see. “Look how well you take me.” His fingertip traces the place where she stretches around him: thin tissue, but resilient. Built to last. Built to let him in over and over and over again after that. A lifetime of pleasure. A forever of Saturdays.

She closes her eyes. “Please.” She doesn’t even know what she’s asking. _Fuck me. Slap me. Choke me. Hold me and never let go._

He wraps his arm around her again. His fingers are wet with her. “Look,” he whispers.

She does. He lifts her and lowers her, and her entrance drags wet around him, painting his cock until it shines with her. She wishes it would stain him. _Mine._

“Look, pet,” he repeats as he fucks her down onto him. The instruction is unnecessary. “Look at us.”

Adam and Eve are in that mirror. No one can possibly have done this thing that they’re doing. No one has discovered it. She clutches his arm tighter and watches with awe. Everything in the history of the universe has led up to these two bodies, and the way one fits inside the other, and the four eyes that watch it happen. “Oh,” she gasps in wonder. _“Oh.”_ Not magic, after all—a miracle.

He settles her down again with him buried inside so his hands are free to touch her. She rests hers on the back of his—not steering, just riding. They roam hot and demanding and directionless: palming her breasts, kneading her thighs, spanning her waist. “Look,” he moans brokenly as he buries his face in her neck.

She looks for both of them.

  
  


_Why are you telling me this?_

_So you know to be on the lookout for it. Sub drop can hit soon after, or a day or two later._

_Feelings have never been a problem for me with sex._

_This is different._

  
  


He finally grabs her waist and starts fucking her in earnest, bobbing her on his cock with heavy hands. “Touch yourself,” he grunts, and she does, with a hand at her nipples and fingers on her clit. He only lets her rest to cum for the first time, and then he grasps her sides again and sets her back to her rhythm above him. What she was designed for.

She doesn’t cry. She feels too much to cry. She watches helpless as he inexorably ruins her for anyone else, because this cock _belongs_ inside her. “Kylo,” she entreats brokenly.

“Yes,” he agrees.

 _“Kylo.”_ Her eyes roll back in her head again, and for a while she can’t say anything because her lungs are too busy crying out the age-old agony of bliss. A little death.

“Yes.”

Her brain goes fuzzy after that. She doesn’t entirely remember the third time she dies, or the fourth. It’s okay. Her body was made for it. And besides, he’s there.

  
  


_Well how can I prevent it?_

_Aftercare helps._

_Great. So we can do that and I’ll be fine._

_It doesn’t work like that, Rey._

  
  


She’s lying on her side with him behind and wetness dribbling between her legs. He’d dragged her down to the bed with him after he finished using her body. She’s covered in sweat. His buttons are hard against her back. She’s shivering, or trembling. She doesn’t know which.

His arm gathers her closer into him. “Are you cold?”

She shakes her head.

“Are you okay?”

She doesn’t answer.

“Rey?”

She nods jerkily.

“Talk to me,” he entreats. She doesn’t. “Tell me how wasteful it is to have a whole separate bedroom where the mirror is close to the bed.”

She trembles. “I will in a little while.”

  
  


_I want you to call or text me if it ever hits after you leave._

_That won’t be necessary._

_You’re an incredibly stubborn woman._

_Thank you._

  
  


She watches the clock on the wall. It’s analog, with a second hand. That’s considerate. It gives her gaze something to ride on. Around and around.

“Rey.” His voice is strained behind her. “Why didn’t you use the safeword?”

“I’m fine,” she whispers.

“You’re not.”

She doesn’t insist on it.

“Do you want me to get you something? Food, or a washcloth? Your clothes?”

She shakes her head.

“Do you want me to stop holding you?”

She shakes her head.

“Did I hurt you physically?”

She shakes her head.

“I should have been clearer from the start. I should have told you. It’s my fault.” She doesn’t know what he’s talking about. “The safeword is for any reason, not just if it gets too rough physically. We can _always_ stop and talk, and start up again only if we both want to. I’m sorry, Rey. I should have told you.”

“I’m fine,” she says evenly.

He huffs a sad chuckle. “Don’t insult my intelligence. I think I know you better than that.”

“I’ll be fine,” she amends.

The second hand goes on moving. He holds her.

  
  


_So? Are you finished with your disclaimers?_

_For now._

_Are you going to fuck me now?_

_Yes._

_Okay. Good._

_Are you ready to begin?_

  
  


It’s reckless, to do what they’re doing and feel things. He’s done it before, probably. He knows how not to feel. But it’s her first time being with someone like this, for this long. Nearly a year. She’s seen three seasons from his windows. Maybe she shouldn’t see the fourth.

“Kylo?” she asks suddenly, breaking the stillness.

“Yeah?” he answers.

“What’s your favorite season?”

He smiles into her hair. “Summer.”

“Why?”

“It’s sundress season.”

She chortles despite herself.

“Aren’t you going to tell me how much of a pig I am?” he asks.

“Mm hmm.” She smiles. _“Such_ a pig.”

She hadn’t realized how tense his body was until he relaxes. “I know.”

“And your favorite season is wrong.”

“I had a feeling it might be. What’s the best season?”

She thinks. “Spring. Or fall.” The beginning, or the beginning of the end. 

“Oof,” he complains. “Two. So I had a fifty-fifty chance and I still got it wrong.”

She grins. “Too bad.”

He hesitates. “I wish I knew how to get things right, with you.”

She covers his arm with hers. “It’s okay.”

And for a little while, it is.

  
  
The beginning, or the beginning of the end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I very much hope you continue to enjoy my random self-indulgence. 😊
> 
> I'm on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/TiedFic)!
> 
>  _Chapter summary/content notes:_ Rey and Kylo have mirror sex that both in different ways find overwhelming. Kylo reacts strongly to Rey asking him why he doesn't undress for sex. (The reason is not given explicitly in the chapter, but to let you know, it isn't due to any trauma or problems.) Rey's internal narrative refers to "little deaths," which is the translation of the French "la petite mort," or orgasm. Rey feels overwhelmed due to the intensity of their intimacy and emotional connection, and shuts down and withdraws from Kylo after sex. He's concerned and tells her she should have used the safeword. She eventually does recover enough to engage in their aftercare banter. The flashback italics conversation deals with Kylo explaining to Rey what sub drop is.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With any content concerns, please read the end notes first for notes and a summary. In this chapter Kylo continues to call Rey “pet,” but also starts calling her “kitten.” He treats her at times with a kind of tender, fond condescension that doesn’t amount to infantilization, and no age play is involved, but please be aware of that element if that’s a concern for you.

It’s one of those things that she doesn’t remember where she learned it: from some off-topic professor, maybe, or reading an article. All she knows is that some social psychologist once decided there are five stages of group development.

The first, forming, is what it sounds like. The second, storming, is a time of conflict and testing boundaries. (The storm rolled in suddenly, after she had already arrived. She watches the rain fall in sheets through his windows. It’s his rain, up here. Everything this high up belongs to him.) Norming is the third, when the group attains cohesion and cooperation. Then performing, a productive, goal-oriented phase. Groups spend different lengths of time in different phases. And they can always regress. Ideally a group will stay mostly in performing, but a change in dynamics can send it right back to storming. (He’d instructed her to wear jeans and a casual top. She put on stockings, heels, and a cocktail dress.)

She doesn’t know the official definition of a group. Do they qualify, just the two of them? They’d been performing so well. And then he started saying _things_ with his eyes and sometimes even his mouth, and that’s not their arrangement. (She stands in the living room not doing the chore he told her to. Just watching the rain and thinking about the fifth stage.)

Whoever came up with the stages added it on after. Originally they just had the four, but then it occurred to them: there’s a fifth, of course. For the end. Some call it adjourning. It’s kind of a reach, rhyme-wise. There’s an alternative name for it.

(The storm intensifies.)

  
  


_How many subs have you had this arrangement with before?_

_I don’t know._

_Make a guess._

_Why does it matter, Rey?_

_I just want to know._

_I would give anything in the world to think you were jealous._

  
  


She doesn’t turn around when he comes in. She can barely hear the door over the thunder.

“Rey?”

She turns around. He’s standing by her heels where she kicked them off just inside the door. He’s not wet, save for a few scarce droplets. The doorman of his building meets residents at their cars with an oversized umbrella. Not _their_ cars, of course. The cars of the companies they hire to drive them around. She wonders if he can even drive. “Who’s Rey?”

He unbuttons his jacket slowly, and slides it off and tosses it over the back of the couch. “What are you doing, pet?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

His eyes rake over her, from her topknot down to the seam of her stockings at the tips of her toes. “I expected to find you wiping the counters like I asked you. In your jeans, like I told you. And you’re standing there in your black dress with your black stockings like you want to be taken out to dinner. Is that what you want, my pet?”

It’s rhetorical. It’s not an offer. That’s what she has to believe so she doesn’t leave right now. She shakes her head.

“Why did you wear a dress?”

“I wanted to.” Thunder claps, and she shivers.

“You know what I think, my prickly pet?” He rolls up his sleeves slowly, methodically, looking down at his hand. “I think you wanted to be punished. Are you going to be a porcupine for me, or a kitten?”

She swallows. “Even kittens have claws.”

He finishes tucking his sleeves securely at the elbows and looks at her. “Claws that they’re just beginning to learn how to use. Is there something you want to tell me, pet?”

“I want to be on top tonight.”

  
  


_I’m not jealous._

_I know._

_I’m curious._

_I’ve had ongoing arrangements with probably eight or ten people, at various times._

_Any at the same time?_

_No._

_For all your kinks, you’re secretly monogamous at heart._

_You could say that._

  
  


The air vibrates. It could be the storm, but it’s probably the way he’s looking at her. She wants to run to him, cuddle into his chest and feel his arms enfold her and be his kitten. She wants to apologize and start cleaning his counters, like he asked. She wants to take off all her clothes and turn off the light and crawl headfirst under the covers in his bed so even the lightning can’t show him her tears as he takes her. She wants to melt down to a fetal puddle on his rug and let him shush her soothingly as he lifts up the hem of her skirt so he can fuck her. _My good pet, my sweet soft pet. Letting me use her little hole for my cock to move around in. Hold still for me, pet. Just stay curled up and let my cock do what it wants to, my drowsy kitten. So good. So sweet. Do you like how it feels, kitten? Isn’t this nicer than napping in the sun? Good girl. Going to give you all the sweet cream. Good girl._ Lightning flashes.

“I want to be on top,” she repeats.

He slowly comes around the sofa. Sits down. Rests his hands on the leather beside him. He looks up at her inscrutably. Her nipples pebble. She stands her ground.

“You want to do the work, is that it?”

She nods, throat tight.

“You don’t want me to undress you? You don’t want me to drape you over the ottoman and lick your sweet cunt, my pet?”

She shakes her head stiffly. “Not tonight.”

He crosses his arms. “You want to do the work, pet? Then do it. Take off your panties.”

“I’m not wearing any.”

He huffs incredulously. “You’re going to be the fucking death of me. You know that, right?”

Thunder peals.

  
  


_Have you always told them what to wear?_

_Those who have been open to it._

_Why do you care about their clothes if you’re just going to take them off?_

_I don’t, much._

_Then why do you do it?_

_To relieve them of the decision._

  
  


“Take off your dress. Slowly.”

She reaches behind her to the zipper. She tugs it down slowly, watching him. She doesn’t blink. Neither does he. She hooks a thumb under one strap and eases it over her shoulder.

“Why did you wear a dress?”

She nibbles her lip. “I wanted to.” She slips off the other strap, so the only thing keeping the dress from sliding to the floor is her hand anchoring it at the neckline.

“It should be physically impossible.” The rain deafens. “How beautiful you are.”

She lets it fall.

  
  


_Do you have a type?_

_What do you mean?_

_Smart? Brunette? Detests capitalism?_

_No._

_You mean you haven’t been fortunate enough to come across anyone like me?_

_When you say “come across,” you mean…_

_Don’t try to be funnier than me, it won’t work._

_There’s no one like you, Rey._

  
  


No bra, no panties. Just stockings and a ring of dress around her feet and the storm. She’d thought about him as she tugged the thigh highs up, smoothing the lace flat against her skin. She’d wondered if he would kneel down to take them off, with slow thumbs and a hot trail of lips. She hadn’t imagined that the only way he would touch them would be with eyes as heavy as any hand.

“Oh.” His hips shift, seeking friction.

She grasps her wrists at her waist. “Is that all you have to say?”

His gaze burrows. “Are you real, my pet?”

“What do you think?”

“Not a chance.”

“Why don’t you touch me and find out?”

His hands ball into fists on his thighs. “You want to do the work. Touch yourself.”

“Where?”

“Your neck. Just your fingertips. Lightly. Close your eyes.”

Her eyelids flutter close as her hands rise to her jaw. Her fingers splay. They leave trails of tingling in their wake. The big emptiness of the room presses in on her, and the rain is too loud. She can’t hear him. Her eyes fly open. “Virginia,” she blurts. Their safeword. “I don’t want to close my eyes.”

“Thank you for telling me,” he says, and he means it. She can see the sincerity in his smile. “Are you doing okay?”

She nods. “Is it alright?”

His brows furrow quizzically. “What?”

“That I want to be on top?”

“Do you want to be in control, or do you want to be on top?”

She purses her lips, considering. “I want to be on top.”

“You still want me to tell you what to do?”

 _Always._ “Yes.”

“Rey?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re goddamn beautiful.”

She catches one thumb in the other hand and blushes. “We haven’t started up again yet.”

She can’t read his face. “I know. I wanted to tell _you.”_

“Okay.”

He smiles. “Okay. Would you like to resume?”

She nods.

“Well then, pet, you have lots more skin waiting to be touched.”

  
  


_Who was your favorite?_

_What?_

_Out of eight to ten people, you must have had a favorite. What were they like?_

_Beautiful. Stubborn. Impossible._

_Do you still have their contact information? I’d like to meet this paragon._

_Oh, Rey._

  
  


“Touch the dips above your collarbones, pet. And your pretty shoulders. Slowly. Slower than that. How does it feel?”

“Good,” she murmurs.

“Soft?”

She nods.

“Trace a line down the middle of your chest to your breastbone. You know why your skin is so smooth and soft, my pet?”

She shakes her head. Her breasts prickle with want.

“You were made to be touched. Draw a half circle above your breasts, pet. Who were you made to be touched by?”

She shivers. “You.”

He smiles quietly and shakes his head. “You were made to be touched by _you_. All of that lovely skin, all for your fingers. Circle around to underneath your tits. Lightly.”

She whines, a greedy, involuntarily squeak in the back of her throat. “Please.”

“See how needy you are, my soft pet? Your skin needs hands, doesn’t it?”

“Mm hmm.” Her fingers itch to pinch her angry nipples.

“That’s why you lend that perfect little body to me sometimes. So you can be touched as much as you need.”

“Yes,” she breathes.

“Put your palms on the sides of your waist, pet. They’re not nearly as big as mine, are they?”

She shakes her head and nibbles her lip.

“My big hands wrapped around that small waist make it look tiny. I need to feed you more, my pet. I can’t have my kitten wasting away.”

“Not hungry,” she whines.

“Oh, I think you are, kitten.” He smirks. “But not for food.”

She’s ravenous. She’s voracious. She needs touching and licking and grasping and filling like she needs air. _“Please,_ Kylo.” Desperate tears begin to gather.

“Spank yourself.” She does, with both hands on both trembling cheeks. “Again.” Harder, this time. It’s wet enough between her legs to pave the way for a dozen cocks, but she only needs one.

She rubs her ass wantonly. “Please.”

“Please what, pet? What do you need?”

She draws a trembling breath. “Your cock.”

“Of course. What else?”

“Touch my nipples.”

“Hmm. Those poor neglected nipples. Touch the top of your thighs, above your stockings.”

Her legs quiver at the sensation of her hands so close to where she needs them. She rubs her thighs together unthinkingly. The lace rustles.

“I can never decide how I like you best, pet.” He’s unzipping his pants. _Yes. Oh, fuck yes._ “When you’re trembling and squirming and crazy with want like this, or when I’m inside you and you forget everything besides me.”

Her hands shake with the effort of restraint. “I _need_ it.” She has to make him understand.

“Take your hair down.”

She tears out the pins that hold it up, shaking her head so they shower onto his rug.

“Here’s how this is going to work, pet. Are you listening to me?”

She nods frantically.

“If you want to be on top, you’re going to be on top. I’m going to lie down on the bed and you can get on top of me and ride me as long as your strong little legs hold out, pet. But once you get tired, my kitten? _Then_ it’s my turn.”

“Yes. Yes.” She would agree to anything that would get him inside her.

He pulls his cock out. It couldn’t be harder if it tried. She has to swallow the saliva her mouth helpfully supplies. “Go to the bedroom, pet. Stand at the foot of the bed.”

She scurries. He follows, slowly. Sauntering. Like they have all the time in the world. Like his cock doesn’t need her just as her cunt needs him. He toes off his shoes and pulls off his socks and lies down, shifting until he’s comfortable on his back in the center of the bed. He raises his hands to rest them beneath his head, elbows sticking out. Obnoxiously, smugly comfortable. He could be sunning himself on a tropical beach, except for his clothes and his cock. He glances down at her where she trembles, awaiting his permission. A picture of dripping obedience.

“Oh, my precious pet. Not a porcupine after all, are you?”

She whines brokenly.

He smirks in victory. “Well, climb up, kitten.”

  
  


_How long does it take you to get comfortable with someone new?_

_It varies. Some longer than others._

_Was I longer or shorter?_

_You were probably longer because you hadn’t done it before. I needed to be more careful about making sure you knew how to set boundaries._

_Was I worth it?_

_Do you really need to ask me that?_

  
  


She’s unused to riding someone. How long has it been since she had a passive man lying under her? She kneels astride him. His cock slides in like a hot knife to butter. She whines her relief and her need—both tangled up in a jumble that lives where their bodies are joined. She sets to bobbing haphazardly, with no real rhythm, bracing her hands on his abdomen. She seats herself fully on him until her wet lips kiss his skin and she circles her hips in a frenzy of grinding. There’s no order, no method. Her cunt tightens and flutters around him, and her muscles seize and she digs her nails into his skin and wails her bliss, but she doesn’t stop. She fucks him with a sloppy wetness that cares only for what her body demands. She draws another peak from her innards with long, trembling strokes, and she vibrates above him and he lies there and watches.

She could put on a show for him. She could fondle her breasts and gyrate her hips and tangle her hands in her hair for his eyes. But this is for her, not him, so she strains and sweats and fucks and there’s nothing pretty about it.

From the way he’s watching her, she might almost think he likes it better this way.

His hands are still tucked beneath his head, but now with a carefully concealed tension. “Do you like it, pet? Riding my cock?”

She leans forward to rut her clit against his pubic bone with him still inside. She whines her assent.

“Use your words.”

“Yes,” she gasps, climbing toward another brilliant starburst.

“Your sweet wet cunt likes gobbling me up, kitten?”

“Please,” she whines nonsensically, asking for something that’s already hers to take.

“Are you getting tired, pet?”

She shakes her head stubbornly, trembling as she grinds against him. Her legs burn.

“I think you are.” His eyes are dark. “I think your dripping pussy is going to cum one more time, and then you’re going to be all worn out, kitten.”

She rests her elbows on his chest and her hands on his shoulders and she pants and watches him and tries to understand words, but all she really knows is the distance between her and her next orgasm. Her back arches and her belly squirms against his and her hips wiggle desperately, seeped in the distilled hedonism of his bed and them. “Kylo,” she moans brokenly, and he takes his hands from behind his head and feeds her his thumb to suck as his other hand claims her stockinged knee.

  
  


_How soon can you tell if you’re sexually compatible with a new sub?_

_Pretty quickly, usually._

_How soon did you know with me?_

_Hmm, I still haven’t decided._

_Oh, we’ve got a comedian over here._

_Rey. You know the answer to that._

_No, I don’t, that’s why I’m asking._

  
  


“Tell me you wore these stockings because you knew I would like them. You knew they would drive me crazy from the very first moment I saw them, and I wouldn’t be able to think until I touched you. I wouldn’t be able to think after I touched you, either. Tell me. _Tell me.”_

She doesn’t remember far back enough to know what she’s supposed to tell him. All she knows is the now of his cock driving up into her without mercy. She can’t tell the difference between when she is orgasming and when she’s not. Does she ever really stop? She writhes and trembles and the pleasure never goes away: of him in her and his words and his wanting.

“Poor kitten,” he croons. “Your little body all used up, and my cock still wants more. So you’re going to give it to me, aren’t you, pet?” His hands clench in the lace. “Aren’t you? Again and again and forever.”

Her head lolls back and her eyelids flutter shut and she holds onto her tits for dear life. He fucks her faster, punishingly, as if he’s trying to shove something inside her as deep as it will go and leave it there.

“Goddamn,” he growls, “Why do I never stop fucking wanting you?”

Her muscles give out and she slumps forward and he sits up quickly to meet her, holding her ragdoll body and pressing soothing kisses to her hair.

“I’m almost there, pet,” he murmurs. “Can you hold out a little bit longer, for me?”

She mewls and nods, because she’ll do anything he asks her, even if it’s impossible. _Especially_ if it’s impossible.

“Do you want me to lay you down on your back so you can rest?”

She shakes her head resolutely. “Want to be on top.”

She feels his smile. “I know you do, pet.” His soothing thumb smears the sweat on her spine. “Are you ready for me to fuck you some more?”

“Mm hmm.”

He kisses her hair once more before he lies back down. “Good kitten.”

She wills her spaghetti legs to brace as he starts to thrust up into her used, stretched, shamelessly drenched hole. But almost as soon as he begins, he pauses.

“Wait. Rey.”

She looks at him quizzically.

“Tell me I can take your stockings off after.”

She doesn’t know why her muscles should still have the energy to smile, but they do. So do his.

He braces his feet on the bed and fucks her diligently, single-mindedly, his eyes cycling between her wrecked face and her jiggling tits and the place where he plunders her. The only things she can hear are her gasps and her heartbeat. There’s probably a slap and a squelch and his breath and his grunt, but her senses don’t extend beyond her own body. She’s not herself, and yet she is. She’s never been more herself. She’s jolted back to the world as she cums with a new gush that frightens her, because where did all that wet come from?

The fountain unhinges him. _“Fuck!”_ he bellows, and pistons up into her so hard that his hips leave the bed entirely and pump in midair, and it’s all she can do to stay upright as he shoots what feels like a week’s worth of stored-up cum in wild jets inside her, and fluid coats her thighs and makes a mess of her stockings and she doesn’t know which is his and which is hers. He shouts his peak in snarls and grunts, and she grins with fiery glee at the wild animal between her legs. _She_ did that to him.

His hips lower slowly, and she follows, melting down onto him until she lies across his chest, feeling his cock twitch out its final spurts as her cunt wrings its last flutterings.

She rises and sinks as his lungs heave. “How in the hell are you real?” he repeats wonderingly.

She basks in the sunshine of his wonder. “I’ve never done that before,” she confesses, snuggling into his chest.

“What, felt like you’d died and come face to face with God? Because that’s what just happened to me.”

“No,” she laughs. “Squirted that much.”

“You’re a fucking goddamn dream, you know that?”

“No,” she grins, “tell me.”

“Fuck, pet,” he growls, reminding her that it’s not over. “You took all my words.”

“Do you keep your words in your cock?” she asks slyly.

He chuckles breathlessly. “Apparently.”

“Mm, that’s why you have so many,” she grins.

“I swear to God, if you keep calling my cock big I’m going to fuck you again, kitten.”

She shimmies playfully. “Oh, really?”

He groans. “No. You drained me dry.”

She clucks sympathetically. “Well, you are closer to fifty than forty.”

“I’m thirty-seven.”

“Exactly, that’s what I’m saying! So old.”

He swats her ass lightly, and she laughs. He runs his hands over her ass down to her thighs, and finds the lace there.

“It’s come to my attention that you’re still wearing stockings.”

“Hmm,” she agrees. “Are you going to do something about that?”

He flips them over so quickly that she squeals with surprise. She lies on her back, caged between his arms, and smiles as his thumb nudges her lip. “You don’t have to ask me twice.”

She thinks he’ll crawl down and settle on his stomach between her legs, but instead he turns over on his back, lying between her thighs with his head resting on her lower abdomen and his hair tickling her labia. He drapes her legs over his shoulders as if he’s carrying her, but the bed cradles them both and she gives herself over to whatever he intends.

He turns his head and kisses the inside of one thigh, sucking and lapping at the salt there. She strokes his hip with her other stockinged foot and scrapes her nails lazily along the top of his scalp. She closes her eyes and smiles as his thumb dips under the lace to peel it from her skin, inching it down to reveal more skin for his fingers to caress. She hooks her other foot inside his thigh, teasingly mirroring his progress down her leg.

He works the stocking down to her knee, smoothing it over with a hot palm to reveal her kneecap in a way that feels obscene. He turns his attention to her other thigh, repeating the kisses and licks and progressing downward until both of her stockings hang below her knees. He crosses her calves across his chest, strapping himself down. “I don’t think I could’ve gone another whole week without kissing your calves, pet.”

She whimpers as he carefully slides his hand into one stocking, not pushing it down yet but joining her spent calf inside. She lies lax and pliant as he burrows further in, dragging the sheer black fabric down with him. He finally pushes it off her foot, caressing ankle and instep and toes as he frees her skin. He folds her calf across his face so he can suck her spent muscle into his mouth, feasting on her flesh and her willingness.

She barely breathes as he frees her calf with a dangling strand of saliva and repeats the process with the other leg. He takes his time with her foot, stroking circles with his thumb around the jutting bone of her ankle, reminding her or convincing himself that this is allowed: that he can touch her body because she lets him borrow it, and as long as he’s borrowing it, all of it is available to him.

He kisses her calf and murmurs something that sounds like it could be _Rey,_ but it can’t be, because they’re not finished yet: he and his pet. They’re not finished until he leaves her calf with one last set of teeth marks and one last lave with his tongue, and eases her legs carefully off his shoulders and comes to lie next to her so she can sling her leg over his and try to remember how to be herself again.

She looks over his shoulder out the window and sees no rain. The storm is over, for now.

  
  


_How long were you with them? Who was the longest?_

_I don’t know._

_How did you know it was time to be done?_

_Why are you asking me this, Rey?_

  
  


“I want to know.” She looks at his collar, not his eyes.

“I’m not going to give you an excuse.”

“What?” He surprises her into looking at him.

“If I say the wrong thing, you’ll end this.”

She recoils. “Why would you say that?”

He swallows hard. “Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it.”

She doesn’t.

He sighs. “What are we doing, Rey?”

She’s seized by the urgent need to bury her face in his chest, so she does. His arm clings to her.

“Not yet,” she tells his shirt buttons.

  
  


The storm is over, for now.

When those social psychologists added on that fifth stage—adjourning—they gave it another name, too. Maybe to make the rhyme work better, maybe because it’s not quite the right word. The other one might be better—for some groups, anyway. Like their small group of two souls suspended in the sky.

Mourning.

_Not yet._

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really like this chapter. I hope you do too.
> 
> I’m on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/TiedFic)!
> 
>  _Content notes/summary:_ Rey reflects on the five stages of group development, including “storming,” a tumultuous period of conflict and testing boundaries. She disobeys Kylo’s instructions about what to wear and what to clean, and she tells him she wants to be on top for sex but clarifies that she doesn’t want to be in control. She squirts during sex, and Kylo breaks character to ask if he can take off her stockings after sex (i.e., that the scene wouldn’t be over after sex). She agrees, and their aftercare banter overlaps with his continuing to call her “pet,” blurring the lines between the scene and aftercare. Rey quizzes Kylo about his past subs. He accuses her of trying to get him to say the wrong thing so she has an excuse to end their arrangement.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The fantastic [@dachenabritta](https://twitter.com/dachenabritta) made another [piece of art](https://twitter.com/dachenabritta/status/1315915229390278656) illustrating the last chapter, and I am bowled over.
> 
>  _Content notes:_ The italicized dialogue in this chapter flashes back to Rey and Kylo’s initial conversation about birth control. It includes discussion of birth control methods, STIs, vasectomy, and termination in case of accidental pregnancy. Neither this chapter nor any future chapters will contain either STIs or pregnancy.

She gets restless at the end of fall, like she needs to store up all the running her legs can hold for the winter ahead. She’s not built for hibernation.

She taps and fidgets her way through her days, and wears a sports bra and borderline athleisure to work whenever she can get away with it so she can easily throw on her sneakers and go.

Manhattan is an obstacle course, and the obstacles are people. She bobs and weaves around dawdlers, chasing the last of the sun, the warmth, the freedom of the big air. There’s a time to snuggle up and rest. But it’s not now. Her sneakers beat an accelerating cadence.

She can’t tell if she’s running toward something or away from it.

  
  


_Let’s discuss protection._

_Okay._

_Are you on hormonal birth control?_

_No._

_Do you mind if I ask why?_

_Have you ever actually read a full list of the side effects?_

_I can’t say that I have._

_It should be required reading in high school English._

  
  


She’d gone for a long run that Saturday morning, but it wasn’t enough to dispel the adrenaline. _Yoga pants and a sweater,_ he’d texted her. _Fold laundry_. She pulls up the sleeves of her oversized sweater and rummages through his pristine dresser drawers for clothes to refold. Shaking them out and tossing them in a heap isn’t enough of an outlet for her nerves.

She carries the armload to the living room and sits down on the sofa to fold them. Her hands are impatient, inexpert, and her creases lack the crisp precision of his laundry service. Or him, for that matter. She wonders if he’ll refold them after she leaves, or put them back in his drawers as they are: asymmetrical and uneven and imperfect. Probably the former. There isn’t room in his life for asymmetrical or uneven or imperfect.

Good thing she’s tucked neatly into Saturdays.

  
  


_I had a vasectomy four years ago._

_Then why’d you ask me if I’m on birth control?_

_Because vasectomies have an extremely small but non-zero failure rate._

_How small?_

_Considerably less than one percent._

_Do you like having control over everything in your life as much as you enjoy it during sex?_

_Yes._

  
  


He tosses his wallet and keys on their designated holder by the door. “Why hello, my pet.” He’s in a good mood. _How was your day, dear?_

She doesn’t stop folding, because he hasn’t told her to. He comes over to sit in the armchair and watch her progress. She can’t tell if he’s smiling at her poor folding, because she doesn’t look up.

“I could watch you fold my clothes all day, pet of mine.”

She looks up and grins, and he’s already tenting his slacks for her. “You’re happy,” she observes.

“Why wouldn’t I be? Look what I get to come home to.”

She smiles at the boxers in her lap.

“Stand up, pet.” Happy _and_ impatient. He can usually hold out much longer than this. She smirks as she stands.

But he kneels down in front of her and just slides down her yoga pants and panties. He doesn’t take off her socks, or her sweater.

“Keep folding.”

She sits back down cross-legged on the leather and does. Her sweater curves underneath her rear but doesn’t quite reach far enough to stop the small wet spot that gradually forms on the cushion beneath. She’s pretty sure this isn’t part of the approved care regimen for leather.

“I love to watch you do chores for me, pet.” He toes his shoes off. “Almost as much as I love fucking you. That’s the problem, see? I can’t have it both ways at the same time. I have to choose. One or the other. And I don’t like to choose. I want everything. I want to drape your little stomach over the arm of the couch so I can use your sweet cunt while you fold my clothes. Do you think you could do it, pet? Do you think you could do a chore with my cock inside you?”

She looks up at him and shakes her head.

“I don’t think so either. Because your good, strong body can do a lot of things, but taking my cock is hard work, isn’t it, my pet?”

“Yes.” She bites her lip.

“I know, sweet thing. Good think you’re not afraid of hard work.”

She smiles at him and tosses a pair of sloppily folded socks beyond the shirts and shorts piled in front of her.

He watches her in silence for a while.

The unfolded pile dwindles. Her knee jiggles.

He repeats under his breath, “I can’t have it both ways.”

  
  


_What contraception do you use with other partners?_

_Condoms._

_What do you use for backup?_

_Plan B._

_Have you ever been diagnosed with an STI?_

_No._

_What are the odds that you would terminate an accidental pregnancy conceived with me?_

_One hundred percent. Have you ever considered a career as an FBI interrogator?_

_This is important, Rey._

_I know._

  
  


“You’re fidgeting, pet.”

She stills her knee with effort as she folds the final pair of socks.

He walks over to her, bends down, grasps her knees, and turns her so she’s facing him. He takes one ankle in each hand, unfolding her legs, and tugs gently so her ass scoots toward him. She sits half-laying against the back of the couch, waiting to see what he’ll do.

He rests one of her feet on his abdomen for safekeeping and slowly slides the sock off the other. He switches them and repeats the process.

He takes hold of both of her ankles again and places her feet on the front of his hips. She can feel his bones through his clothes, and they’re just as solid and unyielding as when they pounded his cock into her body last Saturday, and the Saturday before that.

Her sweater has ridden up enough that her cunt is exposed. She wonders if he can see it glisten with wet from his angle. He slowly slides her feet together, closing in on opposite sides of his cock where it strains in his pants. His gaze is dark and unyielding, and she shivers as she’s reminded anew that she can never really predict him. Not _really._ And still she gives him her whole self, to do with as he pleases.

So why can’t she bring herself to be scared?

  
  


_I make jokes when I’m nervous._

_Why are you nervous?_

_Just to be clear, I also make jokes when I’m not nervous. I’m a funny person. If that’s a dealbreaker for you, we should call this off now._

_Rey. Why are you nervous?_

_I’ve never had a conversation like this before. So matter of fact. Businesslike._

_I’m a matter-of-fact, businesslike person. If that’s a dealbreaker for you…_

_It’s not._

_Good._

  
  


His hands carry her ankles ever closer, until her insteps bracket his bulge. “My delicious pet. Think about all the parts of your body I can fuck. I could fuck your feet, hmm? Take my cock out and curl your sweet toes around them. And you would lie there and watch me thrust and your poor empty cunt would feel jealous, wouldn’t it?” He sets her feet down on the sofa in front of her. “Stand up, pet.”

She does, standing barefoot on the sofa in front of him, trembling with the energy she still hasn’t bled off.

“Give me your sweater.” He holds his hand out for it, and she obediently pulls it off and puts it still warm in his palm. He folds it with precision, and picks up her pants and does the same thing. He puts them on the coffee table and steps toward her.

She doesn’t think before she does it: she just leaps nimbly over the back of the sofa, without his permission. She stands naked and grips the back of the sofa with both hands, her eyes alight with challenge.

His face betrays surprise, then a wicked glee, then something darker and deeper. “Oh, pet,” he clucks. “I didn’t know you liked to live dangerously.”

  
  


_Have you been tested since your last partner?_

_No, but I get tested regularly._

_Would you be willing to get tested and have your provider send me the results? I’ll do the same for you. Along with the records of my vasectomy._

_Yeah, I can do that. Kylo?_

_Yes?_

_Are you asking what I think you’re asking?_

  
  


He circles the sofa slowly, and she does too, keeping it between them.

“You know why you should never run from a threatening dog?” He drags his hand along the back of the sofa. “Because it will take it as a sign that you want to be chased. Do you want to be chased, pet?”

She smiles. “Maybe.”

“You should be entirely sure, pet.” His voice coils tight with menace. “Because when the dog catches you, he’s liable to bite. And he _will_ catch you, my pet.”

She shrugs with feigned unconcern, still matching his slow prowl around the sofa. “I’m pretty fast.”

He chuckles jaggedly. “Oh my precious pet, I’m going to destroy you.”

She bites her lip. “Maybe I’ll destroy you first.”

His voice is rueful. “It’s far too late for that, sweetheart.”

She hesitates, caught up short by his words. He takes advantage of her stillness to leap forward, bounding around the sofa after her. She squeals and darts away, heading toward the armchair. She takes him on a giggling chase around the room, and his legs are long but hers are fast, and besides, he still has his socks on, so he can’t grip the floor as well. She runs quickly but not _too_ quickly, because maybe deep down she really does want to be caught. She leads him around the kitchen island, and she nearly clips her hip on the corner, but she misses it and narrowly escapes his hand as he lunges for her. Her legs carry her automatically to his bedroom, heedless of the fact that his bed is against the wall. There’s no furniture to run him in circles around; once she’s there, she’s trapped. She’s his.

She dashes and squeals and cowers in the far corner, and he’s only a step behind. He doesn’t touch her, he just plants his hands on the corner either side of her, one on the window and the other on the wall. They’re both breathing heavily, but he’s panting with something more than the run. She crosses her arms across her chest—protection from the dog’s bite.

“I’ll always catch you,” he growls. “Every time.”

And he pries her wrists from her body and pins them up against the window and the wall, and he leans down like he’s going to kiss her mouth, like he’s forgotten that that’s not something they do. But she forgets too, and she tips her head up and parts her lips to meet his, because what in the world should she possibly be doing besides kissing him?

He remembers himself an inch away, so close that her breath has already gone out to meet his. He freezes for a moment and then staggers backward, releasing her wrists. He pants, fumbling back for the bed to sit down on, so shaken that she worries something is really wrong.

“Kylo?” she asks, stepping toward him, but he stays her with an outstretched hand of warning.

She waits, wringing her hands and watching, waiting for him to use the safeword or regain his persona. She hangs suspended in limbo between the real and the pretend, and what if there’s real in the pretend, or pretense in the real? _Living dangerously._

He composes himself and runs his palms over his thighs. “Here’s what’s going to happen, pet. You’re going to go find a hiding place. Anywhere in the penthouse. Anywhere you think I won’t be able to find you. I’ll give you a three minutes’ head start, and then I’ll come looking. And when I find you, my slippery pet, I’m going to undo my pants and take my cock out and press your pretty spine to the wall and fuck you so hard that you’re going to feel it all the way to next Saturday, and every time you sit down you’re going to remember that that twinge you feel is because of _me._ And then you’re going to come back next week and you’re going to give me your sweet cunt again, and I’m going to use you up all over again, because you need me. You _need_ my cock.” There’s a carefully reined-in desperation seeping into the edges of his words. “Now run, pet. Run and hide.”

She waits a second to watch as he starts to unbutton his sleeve before remembering that she needs to _go._ She runs away and a thrill of fear shoots through her—that irrational hide-and-seek terror that promises that real danger lies in the being found. She pauses in the living room, debating which way to go. The only place in his study is under the desk; that would be too easy. The bathrooms offer no hiding spots but the tubs. Maybe she could squeeze under the sofa, but she doesn’t relish the idea of trying. The little laundry room is no use, unless she wants to try to climb in the dryer. That leaves the hall closet or one of the other two bedrooms. She opts for the smaller one.

She pads silently on bare feet down the long hall to the door and opens it. She hesitates, considering whether to hide under the bed or in the closet. She’s never seen this closet before. She eases the door open quietly and flicks on the light. It’s a walk-in, but long and narrow: there’s a rod along both of the side walls with barely enough space in between the hangers for Kylo’s shoulders to fit. The hangers are draped in white: folded sheets and towels and something that might be a tablecloth. Even a spare duvet. New York City’s biggest linen closet.

She goes to the far corner and carefully unfolds the sheet that hangs there, but just once, so it still hangs but now she can shimmy the fabric to reach down to the floor. He won’t be able to see her immediately. She flicks the light off and leaves the door ajar, so she has just enough light to make it back to her hiding place.

She breathes and tries to quiet her pounding heart. She wonders how much time of the three minutes remains, or if he’s already on the prowl.

She trembles and she waits.

  
  


_You really want to have unprotected sex? You don’t even know me._

_I would suggest that we start out using condoms and later assess whether we would both feel comfortable going without._

_You would trust me to keep using condoms with other people that I sleep with, during our...arrangement?_

_I know that I seem controlling, and I am. I try to have control over as many aspects of my life as possible. But not you, except on Saturdays._

_So why aren’t you insisting on condoms?_

_I would very much like to cum inside you, Rey._

  
  


The silence is thick, or maybe it’s the air. Time has forgotten this closet. Untouched by sun or seasons, unvisited except by an occasional pair of servile hands fetching an occasional sheet or towel. Air can hide here in the near certainty that it won’t be breathed. She tries not to disturb it too much.

She can’t tell if her breath makes a noise, because the sound is aggressively dampened. Each sheet and towel is a stern old librarian devoted to preserving silence, and if a sound slips past one, then the next will catch it, or the next. 

She could curl up in this corner and bury herself in sheets, and the world could search for a hundred years but never find her. He would, though. He would always, always find her.

She wraps her naked torso in her arms and pricks her ears up, straining for a sign of him. She imagines him in every muffled shuffle that might reside only in her ears or her imagination. She pictures him searching methodically, looking for her in every place she might be, opening closets and peering in tubs. Crouching down to peek under beds. She shivers. She wants him to find her _now._ She doesn’t know if she can bear the waiting, the building tension, the way her heart thuds against her breastbone. She resists the foolish urge to burst out of the closet into his waiting arms, but with great difficulty. She shivers and waits and finally, _finally,_ the closet door opens and he flicks on the light and she runs to him, all thoughts of hiding forgotten.

He exclaims in surprise when she hurls herself at him, but his arms come up automatically to wrap around her when she burrows into his chest.

“What’s wrong, pet? Did you miss me?” He kisses the top of her head.

She nods into his shirt.

“Oh, my sweet thing. My poor pet, waiting all alone in the dark with no one to hold her. No one to fuck her, hmm?”

She squirms against him, rubbing herself on his still-clothed erection.

“We should do something about that, shouldn’t we?” He picks her up quickly, wrapping her thighs around him, so he can carry her to the far wall. He sets her down. “Shouldn’t we, pet?” He takes both of her wrists in his massive hand and pins them to the wall above her, and his other hand fumbles with his fly. She pants and waits and watches him, watches as his angry red cock springs free. It matches his cheeks. His hand clenches her wrists and his cock begs for her and his eyes bore into her skin and _oh,_ how he wants her.

“Come up on your tiptoes, pet.” She does, and he picks one of her legs up and slings her knee over his elbow, and his other hand still hasn’t released hers where they’re trapped above her, so all she can do when his cock slides inside her is gasp.

He presses up, up, as far as their bodies allow, until her tiptoes can’t go any higher and she thinks he’ll slide her up the wall just like this, with the strength of his cock impaling her.

“This,” he whispers savagely, looking her straight in the eyes. The linens try to steal the sound, but her ears snatch it greedily. _“This_ is how it’s supposed to be.”

He slides her wrists even higher up the wall until her arms are nearly straight, and he looks down to where their two bodies are connected, and he starts thrusting so tortuously slowly that she thinks she might die from it.

Her eyes roll back and her head lolls to the side and she gives this, the experience of their sex, to him. It’s his putty to mold as he wants, and what he wants is to pin her to the wall and to wet his cock with her, dipping inside to coax out wet that needs no coaxing. It coats his shaft and says _look what a nice pet you have, look how good her cunt is at helping you fuck her, look how very much she needs you._

“Please,” she breathes, arching against the wall to try to feel _more,_ and the muscles inside her try to grab and squeeze and hold on so he’ll fill her and fuck her and stay.

He raises her knee higher, opening her up even more for him. “Look at me.”

She opens her eyes with difficulty, and finds his face to try to focus on. It’s backlit by the closet light above him.

“Tell me you want it.”

“Want,” she agrees breathlessly as he thrusts. “Want it.”

“Tell me you need it.”

“Need.” Her wrists twist in his hand.

“Tell me you need _me.”_

“Mm hmm.”

“No, I need you to say the words.” He stills, buried inside her.

 _She’ll curl up in this corner and bury herself in sheets, and the world will search for a hundred years but never find her._ “I need you.”

“Say my name.” His eyes search frantically for something in hers. She doesn’t know if he’ll find it.

“I need you, Kylo.”

The dog chased her and caught her, but he doesn’t bite her. He lets her wrists go and picks her up so her calf can stop straining, and he cradles her easily and he fucks her hard, like he knows she likes it. She likes it because _he_ likes it, and God, how she loves to be liked by him. She sits on his arms in his closet and leans against his wall and cums on his cock as it slams into her, then cums again as he pushes into her with long strokes and kisses her forehead. She holds onto his shirt and moans into the suffocating stillness, and he gives her his cock over and over to make more moans and more wet and more trembling.

“Pet,” he murmurs, brushing his lips over her temple. “Pet. Push down on your stomach for me.” He extracts one hand and holds her with just the other arm as he guides her hand to her lower abdomen. “Right there. Right there. Do you feel it?” He catches her under the ass again with his other arm.

She already feels everything in the world, so what’s one more thing? She presses with her fingertips, not sure what he wants from her, but when he thrusts in again she cries out at the new place his cock hits like this. She could almost believe that she feels him through the layers of skin and fat and muscle: proof that there’s really something inside her that’s his.

She pushes down and holds on and exists. It’s all she can manage.

“That’s it, pet. Just like that.”

  
  


_Have you ever had unprotected sex before, Rey?_

_No._

_Would you like to?_

  
  


His arms are wrapped around her and she doesn’t know why, until he takes her off the wall and cradles her backward and she clings to him as he lowers her to the floor. He spares an arm to rip the low-hanging sheet from its hanger and shake it out enough that he can settle her on it fully. Her head is nestled in the corner, his body covering hers, still joined.

“I’m going to fuck you some more, pet. And you’re going to lie here on your soft sheet and let me, hmm?” He starts thrusting slowly, with exquisite rolls of his hips that make her whine and open her legs still further to admit him. “I’m going to pile every sheet in this closet on you, pet, and keep you wrapped up snug and cozy and come in to feed you and cuddle you.” His thrusts intensify. She closes her eyes and gives herself over to him. “And fuck you too, pet.” His hands lock around the top of her head to keep it from hitting the wall. He props himself on his elbows and grunts as she plants her feet on the floor and pushes her hips up with her tiptoes to meet him. “Because you need to be fucked. Just look how happy it makes you.”

Her body is in the midst of a drawn-out, neverending trembling orgasm. She doesn’t answer. She doesn’t need to.

He pounds her further into the corner, and his head bumps the wall but hers doesn’t because his knuckles bear the brunt.

“Look at me.” She contracts her brows and shakes her head, still caught in the throes of bliss. He plunges into her so hard her ass ripples with it. _“Look_ at me.”

Her eyes snap open. He cums reluctantly, with a groan and a final few thrusts that paint her insides white with what he leaves there.

Her head is still clasped in his hands when he collapses, spent, on top of her, tangled in sheets and sweat.

“Jesus,” he murmurs against her cheek. “Rey.”

His weight presses her into his sheet. His carpet. His closet. His life. But in that moment, she doesn’t feel trapped.

“Come here,” he murmurs, maneuvering them so he’s sitting in the corner with her nestled between his legs. He wraps them both up in the sheet, so she’s cuddled by his back behind her and his arms and legs on either side and the sheet in front. He slides his arms under the sheet and under her arms to wrap around her bare stomach and pull her back against him.

She catches her breath and lets herself be held.

When she can speak again, she says, “You were talkative tonight.”

“Oh?” His lips brush her hair.

“You hardly used to talk, when we first started.”

His arms clench around her. “Did you like it better that way?”

She watches the hanging towels and thinks. “I like it both ways.”

“But which do you like more?”

She strokes his arm reassuringly beneath the sheet. “I like when you talk.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” She leans her head back and rests it against him.

“You don’t want me to just shut up and get on with it? I thought maybe you chose me because you liked the strong, silent type.”

She grins. “You’ve _never_ been silent.”

“I suppose not,” he smiles. His chest vibrates against her as he speaks. “You’re bad at hide and seek. You’re not supposed to jump out at the person looking for you.”

She smiles. “You were taking too long. Besides, you were cheating. Your apartment is too sparsely furnished. It was too easy for you to find me.”

He tightens his arms around her middle. “So what I’m hearing is you want me to spend more money on furniture.”

“I didn’t say that!” she protests.

“Or a bigger place? I think there’s a five-bedroom on the market a couple blocks away…”

“Don’t you fucking dare!” she squeals, trying to keep the smile from her voice.

“You’re right, I don’t need five bedrooms.” He nuzzles her hair. “All I really need is this closet.”

She huffs. “This closet is nicer than some apartments I’ve seen.”

 _“You’re_ nicer than some apartments.”

She cuddles further into his embrace. The sheet rustles. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

His arms are warm around her. “I know.”

She rests her hand on his forearm and closes her eyes. “This doesn’t make any sense,” she murmurs.

“I know.”

They don’t talk for a while.

  
  


She listens to him breathe. She lets herself be in his cocoon. She’ll need to leave soon. Put her sneakers back on. Fill her lungs up with the open air. She’ll need to run away, not snuggle up and rest. She’ll need to remind herself that nothing in this closet is meant for her. Not the sheet, or the arms, or the words, or the thick silence.

She’s not built for hibernation.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since AO3 unfortunately isn’t good at sending email notifications for subscriptions to anon works, feel free to check [Twitter](https://twitter.com/TiedFic) for updates!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note the addition of 18 shiny new tags applicable to this chapter, starting with Menstruation. This is a period sex chapter—see the end notes with content concerns for notes/summary.
> 
> [@alantieislander](https://twitter.com/alantieislander) on Twitter made an absolutely stunning [moodboard](https://twitter.com/alantieislander/status/1321904264520863744) for this fic.

_Hello?_

_Hi. It’s me. Rey._

_Yes, Rey, I know._

_I can’t come tonight._

_Is everything okay?_

_I’m on my period._

_That didn’t stop you last month._

_It’s the second day. My cramps are bad._

_You can come anyway._

_I’m in pain, Kylo, I’m not in the mood for—_

_Not for sex._

_Then why?_

  
  


She’s out of painkillers, and she’s down to her last overnight pad. She would’ve had to drag herself out of bed to go to the drugstore anyway, so she might as well go to his place instead. That’s what she tells herself as she forces herself out of the car he sent for her, wincing as she straightens up. She holds her lower abdomen like she’s keeping her uterus from falling out. It might hurt less if it did.

The doorman smiles at her, and the concierge gives her a _good evening_ like she belongs. Like she doesn’t look like death. Like she lives there and doesn’t just visit once a week to be thoroughly fucked.

Well she’s certainly fucked this week. But by her own body instead of his.

  
  


_I could take care of you. If you want._

_What? Why?_

_Does it matter?_

_Fuck, Kylo, it hurts._

_Do you live with someone? Is there someone who can take care of you?_

_No._

_I’m sending you a car. Text me your address._

  
  


The only thing that distracts her from the pain on the elevator ride up is the thought that after all these months, he didn’t even know whether she lives alone. She could be in a relationship with someone, for all he knows. She wonders if he would mind.

She knocks on his door with a momentary regret at how awful she looks. He might never want to fuck her again after seeing her gross and greasy, with tangled hair and a shapeless shift dress that she put on because it doesn’t constrict her tender midsection. But the pain spikes as he opens the door and she can’t worry about how she looks because she’s too busy trying not to double over and yell. Tears spring to her eyes. This was a bad idea.

“Jesus, Rey. Come in. Let’s get you in bed.”

She hobbles in, holding her stomach with one hand and his arm with the other. It’s stupid how big his condo is even under normal circumstances, but when it’s hard to walk it’s torture. She takes a break by the couch to lean against it, screwing her eyes shut.

He sounds worried. “Can I carry you?”

She shakes her head automatically, biting her lip against the pain. But when she tries to take another step it feels like she’s been stabbed, and she would’ve fallen if not for his arms scooping her up. She doesn’t open her eyes.

He walks slowly, evenly, taking care not to jostle her. She doesn’t even open her eyes when he deposits her on the bed, she just rolls onto her side and curls up.

His voice is low. “I’ll be right back.” She doesn’t answer.

She grunts her body’s objection when the mattress dips beside her.

“I need you to sit up, Rey.”

She grunts and shakes her head.

“I need you to drink some water and eat these saltines so you can take Tylenol. I have some chamomile tea for you, too. Then you can lie back down with a hot water bottle. I’ll help you.”

She opens her eyes to see him in a white undershirt and pajama bottoms, setting a tray on the bedside table.

“Hurts,” she mumbles.

“I know. It’ll feel better after.”

“Uh uh,” she protests.

“Are you going to be good for me, pet?”

Her eyes snap to his. She hates that her nipples pebble, partly because they’re too sensitive against her dress and partly because... That’s not what this is. Is it? She’s confused.

“Come on, pet,” he coaxes her with a gentle hand rubbing her arm. “I’ll help you sit up.”

“Can’t,” she croaks truthfully.

He sets the tray on the bed. Then he climbs in behind her, she thinks to spoon her, but it only lasts long enough for him to slide an arm beneath her so he can bring her up with him when he sits. She whimpers, clutching her stomach. “I know, pet,” he murmurs. “I know.”

He sits behind her, with his legs encircling her where she sits in a pitiful ball. He’s warm against her back. Why doesn’t he wear pajamas all the time? she thinks. Much better than suits. Much softer.

He leans over enough to hook the edge of the tray with his fingers and slide it toward them. He picks up the water first, and when she doesn’t take the glass he holds it up to her mouth for her. She drinks quickly, sloppily, wanting it to be done so she can lie back down. He feeds her the saltines methodically, and in between he gives her sips of tea and smooths the matted hair from her forehead and flushed cheeks. She eats and drinks with single-minded devotion to the mission, and even that’s almost more than she can do. “Please,” she moans at one point, when half of the crackers are gone, “lie down.”

“Not quite yet,” he says, “you’re not finished yet. You’re being so very good for me, pet. Drink a little bit more.”

He coaxes the tea past her lips, and whispers praise as she chews the crackers, and his body radiates heat for her but he doesn’t touch her, just surrounds her with his warmth and his smell. A sudden cramp seizes her in between bites and she digs her fingernails into his thigh as she cries out, but he takes it and lets her ride out the pain. He lets her give him some, too.

Finally, _finally,_ the tea and crackers are gone, and he helps her take the last gulp of water to swallow the pills he feeds her. He moves his leg away so his strong hands can help support her back down to the bed. Her legs writhe in discomfort at the shift in position.

“I’ll be right back. Going to get your hot water bottle.”

She closes her eyes.

She doesn’t know how long it takes. She hears noises from the kitchen: the clatter of metal on metal and the squeal of a teakettle. Suddenly there’s a body bending over her, and gently prying her hand from her middle so something else can slip in instead, something deliciously warm. She moans and he whispers, “Does that feel good, sweetheart?” and she doesn’t even think, she just nods. “Do you want me to turn the light off?” She nods again. She hears a click, and the yellow of her eyelids changes to black.

She realizes that now that he has nothing left to do for her, he might leave. So she grunts to get his attention and sleepily commands, “Stay.”

She doesn’t open her eyes, but she can hear the smile in his voice. “Yes, Rey.”

The mattress dips as he gets in behind her. He doesn’t touch her, doesn’t talk, just is. Just stays.

The haze of pain recedes at some point, swallowed by the blur of sleep.

  
  


_It’s so fucking hard for me to see you in pain, Rey. Harder than it is for you to be in pain. If you were awake you could tell me how selfish I am._

  
  


She wakes to a lukewarm water bottle slack against her. She stirs experimentally and finds the worst of the pain is gone. She turns over. Kylo is asleep beside her, on his stomach with his arms encircling his head on the pillow. She smiles. She wonders if this is why he doesn’t let her see him sleep: because he sleeps like a little boy at naptime. She could tuck a floppy, well-loved stuffed dog in the crook of his arm and it wouldn’t look out of place. She could watch him for longer, but she doesn’t know what time it is, and she should be getting home. The clock on the bedside table tells her it’s 11:23. She sits up slowly, trying not to wake him by any sudden movements. He already has pajamas on. He can sleep through the night, and in the morning he’ll wake up alone like any other Sunday.

She uses the powder room off the entryway rather than risk making noise in the master bath. She discards the heavy, sodden pad and pulls out her last one from her purse. _Shit._ She’ll still have to stop at a drugstore on her way home.

When she comes out of the bathroom and finds him standing on the edge of the living room, the first thing she thinks is how lost he looks. Lost in his own too-big penthouse, with his bare feet and without his stuffed puppy dog.

He still looks half asleep. “Why’d you come out here?” She’s never seen someone sleepwalk, but she thinks this is what it looks like.

“I needed to use the bathroom,” she answers evenly.

“Come use ours,” he slurs.

“Kylo?” she asks gently. “Do you know where you are?”

“Home.”

“Mm hmm,” she agrees. “Why don’t you get back in bed and finish sleeping?”

He shakes his head groggily. “Leaving. I dreamed Rey was leaving. Need to get waffles.”

She gasps. He really _is_ asleep. He’s standing and talking to her, and he’s asleep. She puts down her purse and advances on him carefully. “It’s okay, Kylo. You can go to bed.”

“But then she’ll leave me.” She thought she knew everything there was to know about his voice, but there’s a throbbing hurt there that she’s never heard.

“She won’t leave,” she lies gently.

He sets his chin obstinately. “She will.”

“It’s okay, Kylo. You’re okay. Go to sleep.” She forgets you’re not supposed to touch a sleepwalking person. She runs her hand soothingly over his arm. He looks down.

He blinks hard a few times. He looks at her with eyes that see. “Rey?”

She pulls back instinctively.

His voice is harsh. “What happened? What did I do?”

“Nothing,” she hastens to assure him. “Just walked out here.”

He rubs a shaking hand over his face. “What did I say?”

She hesitates. “Nothing.”

“Tell me.”

“That you didn’t want me to leave. And something about waffles.”

“That’s all?”

She nods.

He slumps as the tension starts to abate. “Wait. You’re leaving?”

She nods.

“Why?” Why does he sound so hurt?

“I need to go to the drugstore. And go home.”

“Why?” he repeats.

“I’m out of pads.”

He looks at her like she’s speaking a different language. “But you...you already used the ones in the bathroom?”

“What?”

“The ones I bought?”

“Where?”

“In the master bathroom.”

“Oh. No. I didn’t realize.” She shifts from one foot to the other.

“Are you still in pain?”

“It’s not bad.”

“So you are.”

“It’s nothing I can’t handle,” she insists.

“That’s not what I asked,” he says softly.

“Kylo, I do this every month. It’s fine.”

“It’s that bad? Every month?”

She shrugs. “Give or take.”

“Rey.” He looks lost. “Why are you leaving?”

“It’s almost midnight. I should get home.”

“That’s not...” he runs his hand through his hair. “Will you stay?”

“Why?” she asked, confused. “I’m in no shape for rough sex.”

“Do you really think that’s the only reason why I’d want you to stay?”

“Okay, what am I missing here? Why are you acting like that’s not what we do every week?”

He’s at a loss for words, which is new. Finally, he says, “Have you ever wondered why I call you ‘pet?’”

She nods.

“Because I want to take care of you. Sexually, obviously, but not just that.”

“But why?”

He swallows and looks down. “Does it matter?”

“Yes,” she says insistently, stepping toward him. Close enough to kiss.

“You’re going to think it’s fucked up.”

She smiles wryly. “I’ve cum with your dick in my spanked-raw ass and your hand around my throat. I’m pretty sure I’m okay with fucked up.”

He looks away, at a patch of floor where he once made her lie spread-eagle for two hours while he stuffed her full of dildos and licked every inch of her skin. “My parents didn’t take care of me when I was a kid. They hired other people to do it. And it feels like if I could take care of someone, it would make that better. Somehow.”

“Have you ever been to therapy?” she asks bluntly.

He chuckles ruefully. “You are my therapy.”

“That’s not how it works.”

“I’m not a nice person,” he repeats. An old, worn-out echo.

“One day you’re going to stop fucking telling yourself that.”

“Rey,” he trembles. “Please. Let me do this one thing.”

She hesitates, and she surrenders.

  
  


He strips her of her clothes carefully in the master bathroom. She stands there and looks at the pyramid of pads and tampon boxes on the sink. He ordered one of everything.

Her stomach is bloated, distended past her meager breasts. Old dark red commingles with the fresh, bright new between her thighs. Three days of prickle lives on her legs and under her arms. She has never been less desirable with him than she is now.

It’s unfair how good he looks in comparison, even in his rumpled pajamas. She stands there and bleeds and watches his arms, more bare than she’s ever seen them, and hates him a little. He doesn’t undress. She doesn’t know if she expected him to. But even through his flannel pants she can tell: he’s half hard. She doesn’t ask, and he doesn’t explain. He just turns the shower water on hot and puts a hand on her lower back and helps her in. When she feels the water, she doesn’t want to do anything but feel the water. So she stands still and he takes a washcloth and covers it in bodywash and runs it gently over her skin, like she’s fragile. She could tell him that the skin on her shoulders doesn’t hurt, nor her arms, nor her back, so he doesn’t need to treat them with such care. She doesn’t. He doesn’t even trust the washcloth to be soft enough for her tender abdomen. He avoids it altogether, and her breasts. He lets the hot water take care of them.

When he comes around to stand in front of her she sees through his sodden pajama pants that he’s erect. Not demanding, not even asking, just rock hard in a silent, proud admission of the effect of her skin beneath his hands. She smiles lazily and closes her eyes.

Little rivulets of red stream down the inside of her thighs, she’s sure, but most of it is hidden, sheltered from the full impact of the water. He’s gone from her for a moment, she senses, but he returns, and when she opens her eyes he’s kneeling in front of her on a towel. Looking up in a silent question. She puts both hands on her head to steady herself as he gently lifts her thigh to hook it over his shoulder.

He uses no washcloth. He has his hands. They thread through hidden folds, gathering the crimson they find there. He cups a handful of water and brings it to gently submerge her cunt in its own pool. She moans her approval. He continues methodically. His finger slips back between her cheeks to capture any red that snuck there, and he caresses her puckered hole. She grabs his hair more firmly. So focused is she on the nether progress of his finger that she forgets he has a mouth.

He doesn’t.

He sucks her folds in carefully, slowly, letting her tell him no if she wants. She doesn’t. What his tongue can’t stroke, his fingers do, and she knows he must taste her blood. He must not mind. He cranes his neck and latches his lips around her cunt and drinks it from the source. She cries out instinctively at the wrongness, but who exists to say it’s wrong except the world? And what has the world to do with what happens between him and her? She holds his hair and leaves him to his slow and tender feast.

Finally he tears his mouth away. “Want to make you cum. Can I?”

“No. I don’t want to cum standing up. I’m too tired, I might fall.”

He shoots up to standing, and she can see that his erection hasn’t abated one bit. “You’re so fucking good, Rey, telling me what you want.”

She smiles hotly. “Call me pet.”

“My good, sweet pet.”

“Wash my hair.”

She wasn’t prepared for him to lean down and kiss her forehead impetuously, and it seems from the look on his face like he wasn’t either. “Was that okay?”

She looks up at him and nods solemnly.

“I want to take care of you.”

“I know.”

“I want to take care of you all the time, Rey.”

“Wash my hair,” she repeats, laying a hand flat on his chest. He doesn’t move. She slides her hand down, so her fingers brush his shirt over his abs. His cock jumps. “Wash my hair.”

He’s going to fuck her, she thinks. She knows that storm in his eyes and she knows what it means. He’s going to bend her in half and fucking plow her. And it’ll hurt afterward, but who cares about afterward when there’s a now to be had?

But he doesn’t. He takes a pump of shampoo in his hand, and he circles around behind her and spreads it over the crown of her head and starts to work up a lather. He doesn’t speak. Neither does she.

He wants to take care of her more than he wants to fuck her, and that knowledge is new and maybe dangerous.

She reaches behind her and wraps her hand around his cock. She tugs it from its heavy, clinging flannel confinement.

He exhales shakily. “Fuck.”

“Don’t stop,” she warns. His fingers keep working, and so do hers, working their way from base to tip and back again. Each journey is a world of bliss, to judge by his moans. His hands falter. She steps away, under the spray, to rinse off. When she comes back, he has the conditioner ready.

She turns her back on him again, but this time she goes up on her tiptoes and backs up against him, spreading her thighs just enough to let his cock jut through her labia. He curses under his breath and widens his stance, bending his knees so she can set her heels back on the floor.

He has significantly more trouble with the conditioner than with the shampoo, because his dick is too busy in its new home. She reaches between her legs and feels the tip when it pokes through, caressing it. Pressing it up so it rubs against her clit on its way back.

“Jesus fuck,” he breathes jaggedly.

“Don’t stop.”

“You’re the best fucking thing in my life.”

“Don’t stop.” She doesn’t know if she’s talking about the conditioner or the thrusts. Or the words.

“Don’t ever leave me.”

She does cum, after all. And so does he, spurting out from between her legs as she jacks off the tip of his cock as if it’s hers.

She turns around and lets the shower rinse her hair as he holds her, for a long time. His shirt is wet against her cheek.

They don’t say anything.

The water never gets cold.

  
  


He changes quickly into dry pajamas while she uses the toilet. He fixes her a new water bottle and turns down the bed and piles pillows against the headboard in a makeshift armchair for her. He puts the pad she tells him in a clean pair of underwear from her drawer and dresses her in a soft, big t-shirt from his closet. He kisses her wet hair and her forehead and he brings her a fresh glass of water. She drinks it and puts the glass on the bedside table and listens to the distant clang of dishes as he plates the delivery dinner.

She wonders if it’s physically possible to be more comfortable than she is in his bed. She dozes.

He wakes her with a kiss to her palm and feeds her salmon and sauteed greens and a warm, soft roll with butter. She sits in her chair of pillows and doesn’t move a muscle except the ones it takes to open her mouth for the fork he brings to her mouth, and to chew and swallow. He feeds her more water and painkillers. She finishes her dinner, and he breaks up a bar of dark chocolate and feeds it to her slowly. She sucks his fingers into her mouth with the chocolate, and he never takes his dark eyes off her as he pulls his cock from his boxers and pleasures himself to the sight of her in his bed, with his food in her belly and his fingers in her mouth.

When he cums, he cums on her. Force of habit. She smiles as he tucks his spent cock away and goes to get another shirt for her and helps her out of the cum-splattered one and into the clean one.

“Kylo?” she asks, as he helps guide her second arm through the arm hole.

“Yes, pet?”

“You’re very good at it. Taking care of me.”

He swallows hard. The light must be playing tricks, because surely those aren’t tears in his eyes. He looks down. “I am?”

“Yes.”

“Good,” he says gruffly, still not looking at her. “Sleep well.”

“Are you coming to bed?”

“In a while.” He picks up the plate and silverware. “I’ll bring you some more water.”

“Thank you.”

Maybe it took her ten months to say those two words. Maybe it took him ten months to be ready to hear them.

  
  


_Mmm, morning._

_Did you sleep well?_

_Yes._

_Are you in pain?_

_No._

_Good._

_How long have you been spooning me?_

_Not as long as I want._

_How long have you been hard?_

_Do you want me to call you Rey or pet?_

_Either. Both. Mmm. I need you._

_Fuck. You’re not too sore?_

_No. But we’ll get blood on your sheets._

_I don’t give a shit. Are you ready for me?_

_Yes. Please._

_Pull your panties down, pet. Stick out your ass for me. Let me in._

_Oh. Oh!_

_Goddamn, Rey. How do you take me so fucking perfectly?_

_Mm hmm._

_Rub your clit for me, sweetheart._

_Yes._

_Want you on Sunday morning._

_Oh, fuck, right there._

_Want you every day._

_Please. Like that._

_Want to take care of you._

_Yes._

_Want to—fuck—eat you out in the shower._

_Mmmm._

_You’re so warm, sweetheart. So soft. Want to wake up with you always._

_Kylo. Please._

_Oh, you feel so fucking good, baby. I’m not gonna last._

_Gonna cum._

_Fuck. Rey. Cum for me, sweetheart. Just like that. Fuck, oh, fuck!_

_Mmm. Hand me a tissue. Don’t roll! You’ll make a mess._

_I have three bedrooms, let’s make this exact mess in all of them._

_You know, this is the first time I’ve seen you in the morning._

_Oh? And what’s the verdict?_

_Hmm, you look better at night._

_Am I allowed to spank you when you’re on your period?_

_Make me breakfast and let’s get in one of the other beds and we can discuss_ _it._

  
  


“Kylo?”

“Yeah?”

“You called me Rey.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... this fic is going to have a plot after all. Thank you a whole lot for all your comments and love. ❤️
> 
>  _Chapter summary/content notes:_ Rey is in significant pain due to her period and calls Kylo to cancel, but he asks her to come over anyway so he can take care of her. He feeds her and gives her over-the-counter painkillers, and when she goes to sleep in his bed she asks him to stay with her. She wakes in the night, her pain having abated, and is getting ready to leave when Kylo sleepwalks to her. She wakes him inadvertently and he is concerned about what he might have said, but she reassures him that he only said he didn’t want her to leave. He confesses that he likes to call her “pet” because his parents hired people to take care of him rather than doing it themselves, and he wants to be able to take care of someone else. Rey recommends that he go to therapy. She agrees to stay the night, and Kylo bathes her in the shower (her naked, him in pajamas), and briefly performs oral on her. He feeds her dinner by hand and masturbates to her eating chocolate from his fingers. They sleep together and have sex in the morning, during which Kylo calls Rey by her name.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fourteen new tags this chapter, starting with “feeding.”

_What do you mean, you can’t scramble eggs? That’s like, a basic life skill. Tying your shoes. Unclogging a sink. Scrambling eggs._

_I obviously hire people to do all of those things for me. I would introduce you to my shoe tie-er, but he has the day off on Sundays._

_How humane of you._

_They put four sets of plasticware in the delivery bag. Do you think they were trying to tell me something about how much food I ordered?_

_Mmph. Pass me those pancakes by the pillow._

_Do you always eat like you haven’t in a week?_

_Hey, my life force is seeping from my uterus right now, the least I can do is sustain my body for the grueling biological ordeal._

_Have I ever told you that a smear of syrup on someone’s cheek is my biggest kink?_

_I have no idea how you’re restraining yourself from ravishing me right here and now._

_With great difficulty, I assure you._

_Mmm, and the tangled hair? Too-big t-shirt? You’re in grave danger, sir._

_I know._

_Pass me the fruit. Aren’t you going to eat?_

_I had a protein shake while you were in the shower._

_You physically disgust me, you know that?_

_I think your body would beg to differ._

_My body isn’t begging for anything except that waffle next to you. Here, finish these eggs._

_Whatever you say._

_Look how docile you are in the morning. If I’d known all along that you were so agreeable on Sundays I would have been staying over this whole time._

_It’s not too late to start._

_Nah, you’re interfering with my Sunday morning routine._

_Oh, what’s that?_

_First I do yoga. Then I make myself breakfast. Because I, unlike you, am an actual functioning adult._

_Granted. Go on._

_Then I get back in bed to eat it because it’s Sunday. And by that point my neighbor has started doing her three daily hours of violin. I take a nap._

_I don’t see how any of this is incompatible with you being here. I can arrange for a violinist to play from the next room over. I have no objection whatsoever to watching you do yoga.  
_

_Oof, I’m full. Pass me that muffin._

_Careful, you’re getting more irresistible to me with every crumb on that t-shirt._

_Hmm, maybe you should move these food containers off the bed then. In case you want to do something about that._

_You don’t have to ask me twice._

_Wait! Give me the muffin first._

_Here. I could fucking eat you up, you know that?_

_Is that why you’re feeding me? To get me nice and plump?_

_Mmm, what are your feelings about eating a muffin with a cock inside you? Hypothetically?_

_Kylo! Stop stretching the neckline, you’re going to ruin this shirt._

_I’ll buy a new one. God, how does your shoulder taste like strawberries?_

_I think your taste buds are defective._

_I think you’re the sweetest thing in the world._

_I can’t help but notice that that muffin is almost gone. Are you ready for another round, sweetheart?_

_Mm hmm. Go get a towel._

_What? Why?_

_To put down on the sheets, obviously, I’m still bleeding._

_Mm, that doesn’t seem necessary. I still have another bed we can move to after. Fuck, these perfect tits._

_I’m serious, Kylo, go get a towel._

_No need, sweetheart, I have an excellent laundry service._

_Get your hands off me._

_Jesus. What’s wrong?_

_I told you to get a towel._

_Rey, what’s wrong? What did I do?_

_I told you to fucking get a towel._

_Wait, Rey, please, don’t leave. Tell me what’s the matter. Tell me how I can fix it. Please._

_You can’t._

_That’s not true. I’ll do anything you want._

_It’s not about doing something, Kylo, don’t you get it? Fuck. It’s about being something. How your mind works. God, what the fuck am I doing here?_

_I don’t understand._

_You have cleaning people. They strip your dirty sheets and replace them with new ones. Having to come into contact with a stranger’s menstrual blood sucks; it makes their lives worse. And if we put a towel down, I could take it to go get cleaned so their lives wouldn’t have to be needlessly worse. And you don’t think about that. There are actual humans whose labor makes this fucking insane lifestyle happen, and their well-being literally never occurs to you._

_Oh. But...that’s what they’re paid for. It doesn’t make sense to clean a towel separately._

_You know what? Remember that thing in the closet? I changed my mind. You are only tolerable when you don’t talk._

_Fuck, Rey, please wait—_

_Don’t text me next Saturday._

  
  


She’d never noticed quite how long a week is before.

Monday lasts a year, and Tuesday bleeds apathetically into Wednesday, and Thursday is a kind of no-man’s land outside of time, and none of it matters, really, because Saturday isn’t Saturday anymore.

She’s sure there used to be Saturdays before him. She just can’t remember any.

She tries to keep being angry, and it works most of the time. There’s plenty of ready anger for the people who lounge at the top of the mountain sipping champagne and kicking loose the boulders that make survival a Sisyphean task for those at the bottom. She’s angry at herself, too. Because one of them reached down and offered her a glass of champagne, and she drank it, over and over and over. He never stopped filling it.

It’s infinitely harder to push her boulder with the hangover.

He creeps up on her at night. The anger doesn’t spark to life so promptly when she lies in the obscurity of midnight, staring at the ceiling and wishing it were him. Because her body has long since decided that his belongs above hers, and it’s hard to dissuade.

She rolls onto her stomach and shoves a lumpy pillow between her legs and clutches her threadbare sheets and humps her way to the only orgasms she can afford. The discount version tastes sour when she’s used to gourmet. It leaves her hungry.

On Saturday morning she finally decides to be sensible. She’ll go about her routine as usual—make herself smooth and soft and sweet-smelling and keep her sexiness for herself. She’ll light the two mostly-gone pillar candles gathering dust on her rickety bookcase and maybe put her phone in a bowl to play some nice music and she’ll eat gourmet after all.

As she shaves, she wonders if she’s a bad feminist. That pastime isn’t specific to this particular Saturday, to be fair. She wonders it often when she shaves for him. When she reads his text to see what chore he’s picked out for her: the make-believe mother doll to his make-believe father doll in their make-believe dollhouse in the sky. He at least has an excuse for forgetting that it’s all pretend. He has nowhere but there. But she comes back to the real world—the one where people work for half a living and where a man getting off to the sight of a woman doing his housework carries an inherent sexism that doesn’t exist in their dollhouse. There she can present herself shaved and plucked and pliable and get down on her hands and knees for him and scrub his floor while she waits for another occupation for her knees and her mouth: one that’s not talking except to murmur the soft words that make him smile indulgently and coo _pet._

She’s a bad feminist.

Except.

Except that it doesn’t feel like degradation when she’s with him. Because only the two of them exist, and there is no world. There are no gender roles or beauty standards or socioeconomic power dynamics; there’s only what they want. And it makes her happy to give him what he wants, and it makes her happy to take what he gives her, and everything that’s nestled into the shadows of those Saturday nights is for her. Even the parts that are for him.

And if the world happens to go on existing, that’s not Saturday’s concern.

She piles her hair on top of her head, secured with a clip that lets soft curls tumble. She puts the candles on plates so they don’t leave a circle where she sets them on her chest of drawers and her bedside table. She tiptoes on cold feet to the kitchen to get the cheap restaurant matches, and she decides to splurge and turn the thermostat up enough that she can take off her robe and be naked. She deserves it.

(His penthouse is warm. So are his hands.)

Her full-length mirror is propped up precariously on the wall by the door, wedged against her chest of drawers to keep the partly-broken plastic frame from detaching entirely. Its slight curve makes her look shorter than her height and squatter than her width. The cloudy bathroom mirror isn’t big enough to show anything below her nipples. It’s only in his penthouse with its generously towering mirrors and cloud-high windows with night beyond that she ever sees her whole naked self, as she is.

(Maybe in his eyes, too.)

She sits on her bed and waits for the room to warm. She hasn’t lit the candles yet, because they don’t have more than about half an hour of life left in them, and she wants to use it all. She curls up and tries not to think about her phone and its zero unread messages, and how he obeyed her and didn’t text. She wonders if he’s fucking someone else. She wonders if he, too, deleted that app that long-ago winter’s night when his mouth said _only you_ and his hands pressed her thighs open and she began to learn to yield. There are plenty of other women who would be for him what she is. Except for the teasing. And the anti-capitalism. And the jokes, sweetened by laughter from sweaty lips. But those things don’t much matter when his hand is locked around a throat and his cock is drilling for wetness and his balls are slapping sharp echoes from skin.

She lights the first match viciously. The second too. Two pinpoints of fire flare into being, and she turns off the lamp and stands at the foot of the bed, in front of the mirror. The candlelight softens the world of her room, with its crumbling plaster at the north pole and fraying rug at the south. The world contracts to only her. She unties her robe and lets it hang open, showing her skin to her. She runs one finger lightly from the hollow at the base of her throat between her breasts and down to her navel. She circles the puckered dip gently, waking her nerves up. They tingle at her command. She raises her hand to her shoulder to ease her robe off one arm, then the other, letting it fall at her feet.

He wouldn’t touch her nipples nearly this quickly, or allow her. But he doesn’t exist in this world of candlelight, so she splays her fingers and lets them trip over the pebbled points, _one two three four._ And again. She watches herself in the mirror: a mysterious siren made of flickering shadow. Another curl falls, escaped from the jumble on her head. It tickles the crevice where her neck meets her shoulder. He likes to kiss her there, but she doesn’t need him, she has her own hair to give her kisses. She smiles.

She turns and bundles her comforter up in a pile in the center of her bed, so it cushions her knees when she kneels on it, facing the mirror, legs spread wide enough to let a hand between. She knows without touching herself there that she’s wet, because the air that brushes her labia is a slippery kind of cold. She doesn’t allow her fingers there, though. She brings her hands up almost to her underarms to cup the sides of her breasts, framing them for her eyes, pushing them together enough to make new slivers of shadows between and below. Her hands continue their journey to the sides of her waist, and she watches as they near each other only to flare out again with her hips. She smiles and does it again, tracing her outline, molding her flesh with her hands. Her hips buck slightly, seeking a cock. She leans forward, falling to her hands so she holds herself up on all fours, watching as her breasts gather up all their slight stores of tissue to hang beneath her, between her arms in the mirror. If he were here he would plant his feet on either side of her shins and squat down to fuck her. He likes squatting better than kneeling because it lets him thrust his whole body forward into hers. Like a rutting animal, only more single-minded. Because his isn’t a pre-ordained evolutionary urge to propagate the species—it’s far purer, more fundamental. _Fucking._ She never really knew what it was until him.

Her hips bob backward, seeking him out. _No,_ not him particularly. Just a cock. She pushes her hands off the bed and straightens back up. She slides two fingers into herself easily, biting her lip at the delicious intrusion. When she looks up at herself in the mirror she finds her other hand around her throat, and maybe she’ll think about a why later and maybe she won’t but for now she tightens her grip as she buries her fingers inside herself again and again, all thoughts of slow teasing forgotten. Her thighs quiver and her hand squeezes, and she fucks herself desperately, and it’s not enough, not nearly enough, because what are her two fingers compared to his cock, and what’s her hand at her throat compared to his, and his broad, warm palm and his long, fleshy fingers that she always imagines will meet at the back and his face will be the last thing she sees before he crushes her like a wet lump of clay.

He doesn’t, though. Because he likes her enough to save her for next week, so he can fuck her all over again.

“Kylo,” she whines before thinking, but it’s _not_ him, this is her and her body, and he doesn’t matter: not his hands or his cock or the way the zipper of his open fly bites into her ass, or his lips or his teeth or his tongue on her neck. _Such a good pet._

Her world hangs suspended for the moment when her lungs force a cry upward and her cunt clamps and her legs wobble, and when her muscles finish seizing, she lets herself fall forward, planting her face on the bed so she can put both hands between her legs with her ass in the air, one pressing into her clit as the other resumes its wetly rhythmic work, and she finally remembers to turn her face to the side so she can breathe. Her cheek and her knees hold her weight, and her feet twitch and point and levitate as she slides in a third finger to join its fellows, barely breaking her rhythm. It’s a stretch, but not the kind she needs. It’s tapered and unsymmetrically, unsatisfyingly triangular, not like the thick, solid cylinder of his cock. Her wrist starts to get tired and her fingers start to cramp and it’s not what she needs, but she buries her face back in the mattress and soldiers on determinedly.

The real problem is that her hands are attached to her brain, so she can’t surprise her body. She can’t pause and then jerk forward with a brutal thrust that knocks the air from her lungs, because she can’t sneak up on herself. She hooks her fingers inside and crooks them furiously against the spongy wall as she savagely kneads her clit with the heel of her palm, but it’s not what she needs. “Please,” she gasps brokenly, but the universe doesn’t answer her because he doesn’t materialize behind, above, inside, soothing her with caresses as his hips relieve her of the job of fucking her hard and deep.

She collapses, finally, onto her stomach, her fingers still wiggling futilely inside, her hips still grinding down weakly, chasing something that she needs to catch because what the alternative says about her and him is unthinkable. She needs to stop, she needs to rest, she needs to entrust her body to him to take her there again and again until she thinks she has no more, and then she needs him to grab her wrists and call her “pet” and nudge her legs a little wider and pin her down so he can commandeer her pleasure-pink, drooling slit for his own personal use and ride her even harder than before, until their flesh slaps and ripples and she sobs with the too much that’s exactly enough.

Her hands aren’t strong enough to be everything that he is.

They aren’t big enough to hold her after.

The candles die one after the other in two wisps of smoke and she lies in the darkness on her bunched-up comforter, with messy fingers and wet cheeks.

The next morning she gets up and showers and moves on with her life, because that’s what people do. And in the light of day she can scoff at the nighttime Rey and her dramatics, because going without him for one week isn’t the end of the world, and having a break was good for him to think and maybe learn his lesson, and he probably didn’t fuck anyone else because he’s so particular and he wouldn’t want to invest the energy in finding someone new and negotiating kinks just for one night. Because they have a good thing, and she’s actually doing her part for feminism and anti-capitalism by taking all these orgasms from him and making him give his money away, and if anything, it’s laudable what she does with him and what her body does with his body.

That’s what she tells herself in the light of day. It sounds rational and reasonable, so she has no cause not to believe it.

It will be fine. He’ll text her the following Saturday, and maybe he’ll be extra soft and contrite during aftercare, and she’ll give him a hard time about it but still let him kiss her hair and cuddle her sweaty body into his until she melts.

It will be fine.

Except that Saturday comes, and so does his normal time for texting her, and he doesn’t. And that’s when she realizes that maybe she wasn’t clear.

 _Don’t text me next Saturday,_ she said, not _don’t text me again._ It was clearly a one-week break, so why isn’t he texting her? She checks that her phone payment went through that month, and she checks that the do not disturb setting is off and the ringer is on and there’s no reason why he shouldn’t text her, except that he doesn’t.

She shaves with extra care and trims her cuticles and paints her nails the dusty pink that she knows he likes, and she considers putting the thigh-highs on as a surprise to make him happy, even without knowing what else he wants her to wear. But still her phone is silent.

Maybe she should text him. Or call. Maybe that would be better. Just to clear up the misunderstanding. Because she doesn’t have any other plans, and he’s certainly been punished enough, and she can’t think about another Saturday evening without him, so she doesn’t. Except that she doesn’t text and she doesn’t call because she doesn’t know what to say, she doesn’t have the words to make him miss her or want her or need her. Because what if it’s not a misunderstanding? What if her outburst was the final straw, and he _did_ fuck someone else last week, and he’s having her over again tonight: someone sweet and tractable, who will let him make as many messes as he wants in his beds and in his sheets and in her, and she’ll smile and snuggle into him and thank him for it?

Rey installs the app again.

She can’t think about her Saturdays without him, so she doesn’t. Instead she thinks about Aaron and Jim and Jerome and about their white smiles and their big pecs and definitely not about how Kylo never even told her his real name. She definitely doesn’t wonder if he ever would’ve liked her to cry out his real name as he pumped her full of cum from his naked, trusting cock.

So successful is she in not thinking about him that she certainly doesn’t jump and scramble for her phone when it rings at quarter to midnight, and she most definitely doesn’t answer after only one ring.

“Hello?”

“Rey?”

“Yeah.” Her heart leaps, and she has to cover her mouth so he can’t somehow hear her smile.

“I know you ended this, I know you don’t want to hear from me, but...fuck.” His voice wobbles in a way she’s never heard.

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t have any friends.” She can hear him take a steadying inhale that’s mostly a gasp. “I don’t have any friends, and I need a friend tonight.”

“Kylo, what’s wrong?” She clutches the phone with both hands, like if she holds it tightly enough she can hold him too.

He hesitates, and when he speaks, the words spill out in a jumble, like he needs to get them over with so he can cringe as he awaits her answer. “Would you come over?”

“Of course.”

“Really?”

“Do you want to send a car for me?”

“Yes. Fuck. Yes.”

“Okay.”

“Please come.”

“I will.”

“Okay.”

He doesn’t say _I need you._ Neither does she, for that matter. Or if they do, the words are disguised as other words, like _come_ and _of course_ and _please._

She pulls a sweater and yoga pants on, and by the time she throws a coat on the car is outside, and she jogs down the stairs and wiggles with impatience as the driver closes the door after her and walks around to his side.

By the time the car has gone half a block, she’s deleted the app.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for waiting! You’re all wonderful!


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thirteen new tags this chapter, from Grief/Mourning through Fluff. If any look concerning for you, please check out the Summary/content notes in the End Notes before reading!

She lets herself in with trembling hands. The lights are off.

“Kylo?” she calls. He doesn’t answer. She toes her boots off and shrugs her coat off and wraps her arms around herself as she goes to poke her head in the door of his bedroom. It’s only when she approaches the kitchen that she realizes what’s different, besides the darkness: it’s cold. The door to his expansive terrace is ajar, and flurries dance outside. She slips outside and shuts the door behind her. Her breath makes clouds, and her toes curl in her fuzzy socks but she doesn’t go back inside to get her boots because she sees him, sitting in his suit on the ground, leaning back against the window of his darkened bedroom. The hand she can see clutches a half-full glass tumbler of something clear. Vodka, probably. No rocks.

He raises it to his lips and takes a drink.

“Kylo?” She approaches him hesitantly, like he’s a wounded animal she might startle into trying to run away. And he has nowhere to go, in this cage of glass and air.

She sinks to her knees beside him and rests her rear on her heels, covering one foot with the other to try to keep it warm. “Aren’t you cold?”

He looks up at her with the most neutral expression she’s ever seen on his face. He doesn’t look happy to see her, or sad or angry or hopeful or disappointed. He’s nothing.

“Can we go inside?” she asks, hugging her arms around herself.

He doesn’t say anything, just leans his head back on the glass.

“Kylo, maybe you’ve had enough to drink, hmm?”

He doesn’t look at her. “I don’t drink.” He takes another swallow.

She’s frightened, and she’s never frightened. “Please, Kylo, _please_ let’s just go inside, and we can—”

“My father died.”

“Oh.” She reaches out as if to touch his arm, but at the last moment she thinks better of it and retracts her hand.

“Ten years ago.” He takes a drink. “That’s a long time.”

“No,” she says quickly, clenching her jaw to stop her teeth from chattering. “Not for some things. Not for that.”

He looks resolutely ahead. “Ten years ago today, he was alive and he wasn’t, all on the same day. It’s funny. Isn’t it funny?”

She cups his cheek and turns his face to hers. Her hand is cold, but so is his cheek. “You’ve had enough to drink.”

He hands her the glass without complaint. “I don’t drink.”

She clutches the glass to her chest, like he might try to snatch it back. “Come inside.”

He leans his head against the window again and looks up, to where there used to be stars.

“Kylo,” she says, letting her teeth chatter. “You called me because you needed a friend. I’m here, and as your friend, I’m telling you. Come inside.”

She pushes herself up off of frozen knees and reaches down to him with a hand that brooks no refusal. She can’t lift his weight with one hand, and she won’t let go of the glass with the other, but still she holds her hand out to him. He looks up at her.

There haven’t been stars over this glowing island in a hundred years. Since before he existed. Before his father existed. Before men stacked glass on glass to make gleaming pillars of money. He’s never seen stars from this terrace that scrapes sky; they’ve never reflected back in sparkling sprays in his eyes.

But no, there must be stars. Because when he looks at her and her outstretched hand, his gaze holds a galaxy.

He grasps her hand with his cold one and pushes himself up with the other, cold and creaky to standing, and she holds onto his wrist and leads him back to the door, and when she tugs him inside and closes it behind them she can breathe.

She carries the glass around the kitchen island to the sink, and he doesn’t sway as he watches her, and she realizes for the first time that he didn’t smell like alcohol, and neither does the glass. She takes a tentative sip.

It’s water.

“Oh.”

She sets the glass down on the island, and he watches her. And something shifts between them, or maybe she only thinks it does, because if his mind is clear and so is hers, everything that will be said this night will be real.

“Are you cold?” she asks lowly, in the big, airy darkness of his smooth, spotless cage.

“No,” he answers quietly.

“You must be,” she insists, walking back around the island to him. She picks up one of his hands with both of hers. “You’re freezing.” She does the first thing she thinks of to warm it: presses it to the wool sweater covering her stomach. “Come on, I’ll draw you a bath.” She tries to pull him toward his room, but he doesn’t budge.

He shakes his head. “No.”

“What? Why not?”

“I can’t be any more naked around you.”

The words probably mean something, but she doesn’t have time to figure it out because he’s so _cold._ “I’ll fill up the tub and leave, and then you can undress and get in.”

“No.” He shakes his head stubbornly and steps toward her. He buries his face in her shoulder and wraps his arms around her back.

“Okay.” She’s so taken aback that it takes her a minute to realize that she’s supposed to put her arms around him too. When she does, he makes a little sound in her shoulder like a murmur, or a whimper. She strokes his suit jacket. “It’s okay.”

He has no reason to believe her. She can’t do anything about his father, any more than she do something about her own parents. He shouldn’t believe her, because it’s a lie. There are hundreds of things that aren’t okay. Thousands of them. But tonight is a night for miracles, so there exists one thing that’s entirely, perfectly okay, and it’s her arms around him.

Is this akin to what he feels? This overwhelming urge to take care of someone? She could gorge herself on it and still beg for more.

“Come to bed,” she murmurs, and he obeys. She entwines their cold fingers and leads him to his room, and she tugs off his loosened tie and she slides his jacket off his shoulders. She tells him to sit down on the bed, and he does, and she kneels down in front of him and unties his shoes and slips them off and sets them aside, then clicks on the bedside lamp. She quickly shucks her sweater and her pants and tucks them both into bed like that: her in her tank top and underwear and fuzzy socks, him in his shirt and slacks. She lies behind him and wraps both her arm and leg over him, to give him as much warmth as she has to spare, plus any that they make together. She rubs his arm and his chest to get the blood flowing, and she slides her leg up and down over his, and she kisses the back of his neck, but that part is for her. She can’t see his face, lying behind him as she is, but she can hear when his breathing calms and slows, and she can feel when his body starts to accept the warmth she gives.

Then she pulls him onto his back and lies on top of him so she can try to warm his face with her hands, but her hands are still chilly so she kisses him instead, his forehead and his cheeks and his chin, and she parts her lips and she breathes warmth into his pores and his hands grasp her hips and he doesn’t move, just anchors her so she doesn’t float away to the stars.

“Why did you let yourself get so cold?” she scolds him in a murmur. She brushes his cheekbone with her thumb and tastes his jaw with soft, savoring lips and tongue. “So good at taking care of me, and not yourself.” She tucks the duvet closer around them, making them into a molehill of white. “Silly boy. Silly, silly boy.”

“Rey.” His voice is tight and quiet. He doesn’t look at her; his eyes are trained on a spot on the ceiling.

Something in the coiled tension makes her remember herself, and when she climbs off him he doesn’t follow. What is she doing? He asked for a friend, not...this. Whatever she’s trying to be to him. She slides out of the bed, careful not to disturb the covers over him. But he sits up anyway, and they fall down to his waist.

If she weren’t here, he could’ve taken a bath. He wouldn’t have had to get in bed with his slacks and button-down.

She grabs her sweater and pulls it hurriedly back over her head. He watches her impassively.

“Are you leaving?”

 _Yes. No. Never. I don’t know. Fuck._ “Do you want me to?”

He slides back slowly, wearily so his back is against the headboard. “Do you want to?”

She hooks her thumb in the wristband of her sweater, picking at threads. “Why did you call me?”

“Why did you come?”

They could play this tug-of-war forever, or one of them could drop their end of the rope.

So she does.

She goes over to the bed and she sits down beside him cross-legged, facing the headboard, so her knee nudges his thigh. She looks into his tired, haggard face. “Tell me about your father.”

He doesn’t, for a long time. He rests his hand on his thigh. He looks down and inches it over, toward her knee, and he pauses just before his pinky touches her, like he’s not sure if it’s allowed. Then he quirks just his pinky, and the side of it barely brushes her bare knee, and he leaves it there.

He watches his pinky and her knee, and he takes a breath. “There’s a picture in the photo album that used to be on the coffee table at home. My mom was probably six or seven months pregnant. She was standing and smiling down at my father, who was kneeling on the carpet in front of her. He was holding her belly in both hands and looking at it and his face was just... it was _alight._ Like being a father was going to be the greatest adventure in his life. Like he couldn’t _wait_ to meet me. And then he did.” His hand twitches.

“I don’t know if it was him or me, or probably both of us. He’d built fatherhood into such a rosy dream that it couldn’t help but disappoint. And I was quiet and timid, and he didn’t understand me. My mom used to tell me he loved me, but it sounded like she was trying to convince herself just as much as me. _She_ had to tell me because he didn’t. It’s not the kind of thing you want to hear by proxy.

“She would always tell me, ‘He’s doing his best.’ She didn’t say the rest, because she didn’t have to. The part about how he didn’t recognize any part of himself in me, so he probably could’ve been a good father to somebody else. Someone who wasn’t so introspective or sullen. I was like this hard nut and he couldn’t put enough pressure on my shell to crack it, so he stopped trying. He never looked for the opening and the hinge.”

He draws a breath that quavers for the first time.

“And then he died.”

She wants to take him and cradle him in her sweatered arms, but he only asked for a friend, so she doesn’t.

“You know what they say, how the breeze from a butterfly flapping its wings in one hemisphere can cause a hurricane in the other? That there are all these random elements of chance, and one tiny thing can set everything on an entirely different course.”

He looks over at her, expecting an answer, and she nods silently.

He looks back at the wall. Her knee prickles where his pinky still touches it. “When he died, I didn’t mourn him. Not _him,_ the person. What I’d lost felt worse, because it was all those possible futures where something changed. Where he took a chance and made the effort, or I did, and then it grew, and we could’ve become something different than what we were. I thought the butterfly’s wings could still flap. I thought we had _time.”_

His voice splits apart on the last word.

He closes his eyes and turns his face away from her, but when she slips her hand into his, he lets her. She can’t make it better, she can’t give him his father, but she can hold his hand. So she does.

He swallows hard, and then again. He masters himself gradually, and when he opens his eyes and looks at her there are no tears except for one that snuck out and clings to his lashes.

“Every single part of my life is irrevocably fucked up except for you.”

Her throat aches with the tightness of tears. “Kylo.”

“I’ll learn to do without you, I don’t know how yet, but you don’t have to worry. You just...” He swallows again. “You came into my life, and you upended things that I didn’t even know could be upended. And it’s going to take me a long time, probably, to put everything back together, but I wouldn’t change a second, not a single _fucking_ second. Even though I’m a goddamn human disaster. I’m the hurricane, Rey.

“You’re the butterfly.”

She shakes her head, then she shakes it harder, because she has to make him understand. She lets go of his hand so she can press her palm to his chest. To his heart. “It’s not over. I never meant for it to be over. Just for a break. One week, and I missed you so much it hurt. And then you didn’t text me.” Her breath snags. “Kylo. It’s not over. It’s Saturday. I’m here.”

“Ben.” He gasps, as if a long-tied knot in his chest has been loosed. His lips tremble. “My name is Ben.”

She’s never been so seen. _“Ben,”_ she whispers. She couldn’t stop her smile if she wanted to.

His hand comes up slowly to cup her neck. He quivers as he looks back and forth between her eyes, making sure she’s real. He could laugh or he could cry, and either would be right. She raises her hand to touch his cheek with the barest tips of her fingers.

He smiles. _Oh,_ how he smiles.

And then she kisses him.

His arms are around her before she knows how, and his face is between her hands, and she barely even moves, just presses her lips to his for the space of a breath and a lifetime.

When she pulls back the world is new, and she smiles at him in wonder, and when he realizes how to breathe he smiles in incredulous awe, and his very breath is a laugh and his face is joy made flesh.

“Ben,” she repeats, and this time it’s _her_ face in _his_ hands, and his mouth devours and his tongue demands and meets him and matches him and if she could eat him up and store him in her cells, she would. Her legs don’t let her get as close as she needs, so she stirs and whimpers into his mouth and he understands, and he drags her onto him, one leg on each side so her front can press against his, and she can hold onto his hair to keep from drowning in their kiss, and he can splay his hands over her back and press her to him until she gasps. He tastes that gasp. He tastes her lips, too, as his close over them softly, tenderly, nipping and pecking and smiling and laughing. They’re both laughing. How did that happen?

How did she end up on his legs, in his arms, tied to him with some invisible string that makes her feel _free,_ so free that she would gladly live in his lap and give him every smile in her cheeks and every kiss in her mouth and be even more wholly herself with every piece of her she gave away?

“Ben,” she murmurs again, like the answer lies somewhere in his name.

“Rey.” His gives her his palm to rest her cheek in. “Kiss me,” he says, but he doesn’t wait. _Can’t_ wait, maybe. It’s he who kisses her, and she yields her mouth to him as unreservedly as she’s yielded the rest of her body, in this eternal year that accidentally made her his.

They could kiss all night. She could card her fingers through his hair and let him tip her head back so her neck was bared to him, and he could leave a trail of kisses up the column of her throat, and then he could smile, because he’s kissed her neck a hundred times before, but now his lips don’t have to stop at her chin, they can keep going to where he needs, and she does too.

He could kiss her lightly and firmly and tenderly and so hard and so long that she can’t breathe, and then smile and laugh and listen to her say his name and then start all over again, until the dawn finds them kiss-drunk in a pool of joy.

They could do all those things.

Or they could do all those things naked, with him inside her.

She starts unbuttoning his shirt before she forgets that it’s not allowed, and she freezes and looks up at him for permission, and he nods and lets her bare a stripe of chest, one button at a time. She doesn’t quite make it all the way to his waistband before she has to lay her hand on his bare chest, and curl her fingers and stroke the little patch of hair that’s been waiting for her on his breastbone all this time. And then she looks up from the wedge of skin she’s uncovered because she realizes what this will mean.

She realizes just how much skin he has, and how much newness there will be, and how there’s only one first time for their skin to be bare together, and how that first time is about to be a _now._

“Are you okay, sweetheart?” His hands range softly up and down her woolen arms.

She touches his lower lip. “Are we real?” She doesn’t even know what she’s asking, but he does.

“We’re everything.”

It’s not an answer. It’s _the_ answer. _“Oh.”_

His smile is infinitely gentle, when he leans forward and kisses the corner of her mouth and then sits back and lets her tug his shirt from his pants, and the last button pops free of its hole but she doesn’t take it off, because her hands are too busy with his belt buckle, and the button beneath, and the zipper beneath _that,_ and he can tell the exact second that her blood heats and her hands turn impatient, because he helps her scrambling fingers push the shirt from his shoulders, and he picks her up and plops her on her back on the bed beside him so he can shimmy out of his slacks and underwear and socks. And there’s such an expanse of him and skin and muscle that she needs to kiss and bite and explore, but first she needs him inside her, so she lifts her hips so he can tug her panties off, and she doesn’t bother to take off her tank top and sweater, she just pushes them up under her chin so he can have her tits. And he’s kneeling between her legs and her thighs are spread wide and his cock is hard and yearning, but he murmurs, “Sit up, sweetheart,” and she forgets how not to obey, so she does, and he tugs her tops off and throws them aside like they offended him in some way. And then he slides his hands down her shins to her ankles, and he takes her socks off with fingers built to be sucked, and then.

 _Then_ they’re naked.

“Ben,” she murmurs, and reaches for him with both hands.

The press of his skin on her as he slowly lays himself atop her body is an electric shock. The kind that restarts your heart.

He kisses her solemnly on her forehead and her eyes and her mouth, like this is some sacred rite, the weight of him on her. The nudge of him within her, and the wet heat and the strangled cry, and his eyes on hers, and the fluttering breath and the stuttering hearts—all are sanctified, holy beyond understanding.

It saves her and damns her, this skin. This kiss. Either way, her soul isn’t her own.

“Ben,” she pleads as he begins to move in earnest.

“Say it.” He lifts her hips to him so he can fill her completely. “Say my name.”

“Ben,” she chants, panting desperately. “Ben, Ben, Ben. Ben.”

“Oh, Rey.” He kisses her firmly and messily, never stopping his thrusts. “Oh, God.”

Her heartbeat quickens with something hotter than arousal, more jagged than need. _Fear._ She turns her head to the side and wraps her arms in a tight circle above her head so she can bury her nose in her shoulder.

“Tell me,” he pleads, pausing to run a thumb over her elbow.

She shakes her head and whispers, _“Hold me down.”_

She asked, so he does. He puts a hand on her crossed forearms and he presses, and _now_ she can turn her face back to his and _now_ she can wiggle and smile and whimper and wrap her legs around his hips and find no Italian wool there, just him.

He groans at the change in angle, and he thrusts a little more desperately, and he spreads his legs so he can plant his knees on the bed for leverage, and her world ends every time he buries himself to the root and it starts up again every time he pulls back. And he never stops holding her down. “Rey,” he tells her wonderingly. The most important secret of all. “Want to kiss you.”

She giggles, because in the time it took him to tell her he could’ve done it already, and she arches her back up and wiggles back and forth so her tits brush his bare chest, and she asks, “What are you waiting for?”

He stops thrusting, which her cunt tells her is a terrible shame, but he lies down on top of her and with the press of his skin on her skin and his mouth on her mouth, she could almost forget about her needy, greedy hot hole, soft and dripping, because his weight is so reassuring and his lips are so plush and he whispers her name against her mouth like he’s saying something else, something big and true and eternal all wrapped up in the one syllable that means her.

Maybe it’s better this way, if he doesn’t start fucking her again. Because he could lie here on her and inside her and kiss her for forever, at the very least.

“I want...” he tells her, in a whisper made of awe, “everything.”

She nods, because she knows how he feels, and there’s no reason why he shouldn’t have everything—everything that’s hers to give. Or if there is, she can’t think of it just now. “Okay.”

“Okay?” He kisses her softly.

“Okay.”

She can’t touch him like this, with her arms pinned over her head. She can’t run her hands over his bare back and take handfuls of muscle lower to urge him on. Her fingers can’t marvel at his arms or his shoulders or all these infinite pieces of himself that he decided to let her see.

He takes a breath and slides halfway out, and when he pushes back in her eyes roll back in her head, and if she were capable of rational thought she would probably think that it was impossible to have an orgasm that lasts for five minutes, but every time it starts to subside he kisses her and he says her name and he tells her that he needs her and that she’s everything and he calls her _butterfly_ and his cock finds all the secret hidden places inside her and coaxes them to seize and flutter and pulse, and she moans and she cries and she belongs to him, entirely.

“It’s okay,” he tells her earnestly just before he cums. “It’s all going to be okay now.”

She doesn’t know what he means, exactly, but she believes him. His sweat is already hers, and he gives her his spend, too, deep and wet and warm in that place made for him. He lets go of her arms so he can hold her face in both hands and look down and shudder as he empties himself into her, and then he reaches down and wraps her legs snugly around him and loops her limp, sated arms around his neck and he lies in the circle of her and he reclaims her mouth with his and he kisses her past the point when time stops existing.

There are Saturdays, and then there’s _this_ Saturday.

She’s sitting astride him, and he was hard at some point—hard enough to gently guide her down onto his cock where she belongs—but then he started kissing her again and they got distracted, and then they started talking, and he’s still inside but probably only half-hard at this point, so she doesn’t move too much in case he slides out.

“So basically, what you’re saying is you couldn’t stay away. You tried your hardest, but you couldn’t resist my cock.”

“That’s not at _all_ what I’m saying, and I can now add modesty to the long list of good qualities that you don’t have.”

“I have you, and that’s all that matters.” He pulls her in for a kiss and she turns her face away, so his lips land on her earlobe, which he takes to nibbling.

“You can’t fit a year’s worth of kisses into one night.”

“Mmm, try me.”

“Our lips will get chapped.”

He leans her against his chest and wraps her in his arms. “I would’ve bought an industrial-sized pack of Chapstick for the occasion if I’d known.”

“You know they put things in Chapstick that dry your lips out later, so you have to keep using more Chapstick.”

“I know I will single-handedly finance Chapstick’s evil empire to give you enough short-lived lip relief that I can keep kissing you forever. Picture the nightstand completely covered in pyramids of those little tubes.”

 _“Forever_ seems unrealistic.”

“Not at all.” He smiles at her hand: languid and soft and exploring on his tricep. “I’ll quit my job. Spend seventy hours a week kissing you instead.”

She smiles into his shoulder. “I’ll spend seventy hours a week judging your interior design.”

“As long as you let me kiss you while you do it, I see no problem here. Seems like a mutually beneficial arrangement.”

She sits up so she can look him in the eyes, and he lunges for her with his lips and she squeals and dodges him, and as her hips twist she realizes...

Oh.

That’s not _half_ -hard.

She bites her lip and smiles. “Aww, Ben, you want to fuck me so badly.” She clenches around him. “Just feel how hard you are.”

“I’ve spent the past half hour with you naked in my arms and my cock inside you, and you’re surprised that I’m hard?”

“I mean, you are closer to sixty than fifty, and there’s no shame in it, your stamina is bound to go at some poi—”

He lifts her up by the waist and drops her back down onto him, and their discussion about his stamina is deferred for a while.

_Why “Kylo”?_

_I don’t know. I wanted something unique. Part youthful rebellion, part narcissism._

_You don’t like it?_

_I’m used to it._

_Would you ever go back to Ben?_

_Not for professional purposes, probably. I have a reputation as Kylo._

_Don’t remind me._

_You don’t like how ruthless I am, sweetheart?_

_I like Ben better._

_Oh._

_Is something wrong?_

_No. I don’t know. Just... no one’s ever said that to me before._

_Well now they have. I like you. Ben._

She sits on his rear as he lies face down. She’d started out by giving him a massage, but it eventually just turned into her touching his bare skin. He doesn’t seem to mind.

He moves a bunched-up pillow away from his mouth so she can hear him when he says quietly, “I took the sheets to get dry-cleaned.”

She smiles as she traces his spine down to the dip at his lower back. “What, you personally?”

“Me personally.”

“Kylo, the titan of industry, in a dry cleaner’s?”

“It smelled awful.”

“Mm, chemicals will do that.”

“And when I picked it up, they gave it back to me on a wire hanger with a wax cardboard sleeve and this big flimsy plastic bag encasing it. I’m pretty sure it’s not recyclable.”

“Look at you, one foray into the real world and you learn about hazardous working conditions, single-use plastics, _and_ recycling. Just imagine what a second visit could do.” She scrapes her nails insistently down his back, leaving white marks in their wake.

“You know, I think I prefer it here.”

She grins and grinds down against his ass. “I can’t _imagine_ why that would be.”

_When was the last time you were perfectly happy?_

_Rey. You know._

_Tell me anyway._

_Right fucking now._

“Did you take some Viagra earlier, or...”

He pushes up her knee so he can more easily fuck her from where he spoons her in his ocean of a bed. “If you can’t keep up with me, sweetheart, just say.” She closes her eyes and loses herself in his fingers on her clit. “But I think you still have a few orgasms left in you, hmm?”

She moans incoherently.

“My sweet, darling pet. Gonna use you all up. Gonna use your cunt until it’s all red and sloppy with cum, and then I’m gonna fuck you till you cry, just like you like it, and then I’ll put some more cum in. And then you can rest a little so I can do it all over again. But only a little.”

“Ben,” she whines as he tenderly savages her.

“That’s right. And don’t you forget it, sweetheart.”

She _does_ have a few orgasms left in her, as it turns out.

_Have you ever seen a therapist? About your father?_

_No._

_Would you consider it?_

_Maybe._

_That’s good, Ben._

_Have you? Been to a therapist?_

_Oh, sure. A bunch. Everyone should go._

_Isn’t it weird? Telling those things to a stranger?_

_It’s easier than telling them to someone you know._

_I don’t know, it’s pretty easy for me to tell you things._

_You should go. I think it would help you be happy._

_Oh, well in that case, I definitely don’t need it._

_But I won’t always be lying on your chest._

_Why not?_

_Be serious._

_I am._

_I think you should go to therapy._

_I’ll think about it. Why don’t you come kiss me in the meantime?_

_You’re going to get tired of kissing me eventually._

_Uh huh. That totally sounds like something that’s even in the vicinity of the realm of possibility._

_What am I going to do with you?_

_Why don’t you sit on my face while you’re thinking about it?_

“Go to sleep, Ben,” she murmurs, sitting against pillows and holding him as he lies back against her. She secures her arm tighter around his chest and combs her fingers through his hair. She’s never been more wide awake, but his eyelids have been drooping for an hour.

He shakes his head stubbornly. “No.”

She kisses the crown of his head. “You need your rest.”

“Can’t,” he slurs tiredly.

“Why can’t you?”

He rubs his eyes with balled-up fists. “Sleepwalk.”

“I know.” She strokes his chest.

“I might...say things.” He swallows. “Need to be awake to say.”

“Do you want me to go?”

He shakes his head vehemently and clasps her arm to his bare chest. “No. Never.”

“But you don’t want me to be here while you’re sleeping, right?”

He shakes his head, so sleepily that she doesn’t even know if he understood. She carefully slides out from behind him, and he grunts but doesn’t otherwise protest as he lands on pillows. His eyes are closed.

“Sleep, Ben.”

She pulls the covers over him and leaves a single kiss on his bare shoulder and smiles. Maybe he’ll find it when the sun rises.

She steps into the elevator. It’s not until the doors close that the fear returns, sharp and biting.

Because she can’t shake the feeling that she left something of hers behind, and she’ll never get it back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are five chapters left, and in case it’s not apparent, this is going to hurt more before it hurts less. But there _will_ be a HEA. And more kink.
> 
> Feel free to come yell at me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/TiedFic).
> 
> _Summary/content notes:_  
>  Rey arrives at Kylo’s penthouse to find him outside on the terrace in the freezing temperatures, drinking what she originally thinks is alcohol but later realizes that it isn’t. He tells her his father died ten years ago, and she manages to coax him inside. There is no suggestion of self-harm or suicidality beyond Kylo allowing himself to get very cold. Rey partly undresses both of them and spoons him in bed to warm him up. She asks him what his father was like, and he tells her about their contentious relationship. There is a brief reference to pregnancy in the context of Kylo’s parents being pregnant with him. (To avoid it, skip the paragraph that starts with “He watches his pinky and her knee, and he takes a breath.”) He tells her that his real name is Ben, and she kisses his mouth for the first time. He lets her undress him, and they have sex naked, during which Rey feels afraid and asks to be held down, which Ben does by pinning her arms to the bed. They have more sex, including an incident in which Ben slips into his Dom persona without demarcation of a scene beginning. Rey recommends that he see a therapist about his father. At the end of the night, Ben tries to avoid falling asleep because he knows he sleepwalks and doesn’t want to tell her things while sleepwalking. Rey leaves as he falls asleep.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mind the tags especially with this chapter, which contains a panic attack that may be triggering. There are 19 new tags, starting with Safeword Use, and the tags Emotional Withdrawal and Exhibitionism, which were first used in prior chapters, also apply here. Please read the content notes/summary in the End Notes with concerns.
> 
> Now is probably a good time to reiterate that this fic _will_ have a happy ending.

_Mm, hi._

_Good morning, Ben._

_It is a good morning._

_Did you sleep well?_

_Like a log. Did you?_

_Pretty well._

_Come over. Let me feed you._

_I have a feeling that’s not all you want to do to me._

_Now why would you think something like that, Rey?_

_Your voice gets deeper when you’re turned on._

_You know me so well. Come over. I want... I want to take care of you._

_I shouldn’t._

_Oh, but you should._

_We should wait until next Saturday. I need to think._

_That sounds ominous._

_It’s not._

_Are you sure?_

_I’m positive._

_You don’t regret last night?_

_No._

_Any of it?_

_Ben. I don’t regret it._

_I can’t wait to kiss you again._

_Well, you’re going to wait. Until Saturday._

_My sheets smell like you._

_Don’t they every Sunday?_

_Yeah. But today is different._

_Yeah._

_I can hear it in your voice, you know, when you smile._

_I’m hanging up now._

_Wait. Can I call you? Or text you?_

_On Saturday._

_Fuck, Rey. This is going to be the longest week._

_Mm hmm._

_Thank you. For coming over. And for listening._

_You’re welcome._

_I hope you have a good week._

_You too._

_Rey, I..._

_Yeah?_

_Never mind. I’ll tell you on Saturday._

_Okay. Bye._

_Wait, don’t hang up! Say my name again._

_Only if you’re a good boy._

_Holy shit._

_I’ll say it on Saturday._

_Okay. On Saturday._

_Are you going to jerk off now?_

_Yes._

_Smell the sheets when you do._

_Fuck. Rey._

_Saturday._

_Saturday._

The air feels different when she lets herself in. Or maybe there’s a new angle to the sunset’s last rays. She arrived half an hour earlier than usual, after all. There’s only so long someone can pace around their apartment checking the time every two minutes.

She puts her bag down quietly, like he might be here and she might disturb him. But she slips her shoes off and goes to check his office and his room, and he’s not home yet, of course. Everything is as it always is. Nothing has changed.

Except her.

There’s more room to pace in his penthouse than in her three hundred square foot apartment. He hadn’t given her a chore. He’d only texted her two words, just after six a.m.: _It’s Saturday._

She’d woken up to them: those two words sitting innocently on her lock screen. Perfectly innocuous by themselves. But when you put them together and you add the promise of tender lips and naked skin and other things that she’d forgotten to know how to want, they’re more.

_It’s Saturday._

She shivers.

She strides impetuously to the closet where the cleaning supplies are and grabs the Windex, a pair of rubber gloves, and a roll of paper towels. She hesitates for a second. Maybe he won’t like it if she smells of Windex. She tucks her loot under her arm anyway and shuts the door decisively. If he doesn’t like it, he can bathe her.

Having something to do helps. The windows are too tall for her to reach more than halfway up. She can only do what she can do. She does that much energetically, wiping the sky clean with wide, generous strokes.

This is much better. This way she doesn’t have to think.

The door latch clicks before she expects him, and she guiltily whirls around as if he caught her doing something wrong.

“Rey.” His smile is pure in its brilliance for the moment that it lasts, but then he glances down and sees the Windex bottle and the folded paper towel in her hands, and it vanishes, leaving a small crinkle of hurt between his eyebrows. “What are you doing?”

She passes the paper towel to the hand that holds the spray bottle and scrubs her free palm on her jeans, heedless of the chemicals she’s leaving there. “Cleaning.”

He walks over to her quietly and carefully, approaching the skittish deer that he must still see in her. He brushes a strand of hair softly from her forehead. “Why are you cleaning?”

 _Because I don’t know how to be the woman who was in your bed last week, I think I can maybe be her again if you remind me, but it might take a while, is that okay? Because she was very naked and I’m wearing all these layers._ “It’s Saturday.”

“Oh.” He seems to physically diminish, somehow, like those two simple words that have buoyed her all week deflated him. “I thought...we were going to talk.”

“After.” She looks down at his tie, to where she knows the tie clip secures it beneath his fourth button. “Is that okay? Can we have our normal Saturday first and then talk afterwards?”

“Can I kiss you one time first?”

She looks up at his face. There’s a breathless hope there that doesn’t even try to hide, and that’s why she smiles and nods. She thinks it’ll be hard and passionate, this one kiss she’s granting him, but he slips a hand behind her back and cups her cheek with the other and the Windex bottle and dirty paper towels still hang from her hand, and when he kisses her it’s quiet and soft, and she could change her mind and loop her arms around his neck and kiss him again and again until she melted into the Rey he wanted to come home to.

But she doesn’t.

She looks hesitantly at him when he straightens back up. His smile is fresh and new, and the weight of his week seems to have lifted at some point in the past ten seconds. “Hi,” he breathes.

She doesn’t give permission for her lips to smile, they just do. “Hi.”

His hands haven’t left her back and her cheek. “I’m happy you’re here.”

Her free hand rises to his chest to tuck under his lapel. Underneath that hand and that jacket and the shirt underneath is skin, and she knows that skin; they’ve been introduced. She bites her lip, smiling softly. “Me too.”

“Good.” He isn’t deflated anymore. He seems to have been replenished with something she gave him in a handful of words and an almost-chaste kiss. She didn’t know her mouth could do so much. He retreats a step and takes a breath. “Ready?”

She nods.

He lets go of her, and she lets go of him. Just for now. So he can walk over to the sofa and unbutton his jacket and splay his meaty thighs and rest his hands on the leather beside them and say, “Finish your chore, pet.”

The spray bottle still dangles from her fingers, the plastic digging into her skin. She spritzes a horizontal line above her head, in the region that her paper towels haven’t cleaned yet. She tears a new towel and adds the old to the little pile of crumpled, blue-tinged Bounty on the floor by his window. She sets to wiping. When she glances inside herself to check for that pacing restlessness, it’s gone, replaced by the rightness of this chore and the man in his suit who watches it.

It _is_ Saturday.

They’re silent for a while, except for the periodic sprays and soft squeaks of her task. There’s a peaceful domesticity to their dollhouse tonight, where the mother doll’s arm works in neat, even, systematic swipes and the father doll rests from his day. When she hazards a glance at his nighttime reflection in the window, his jacket is gone, and he’s rolled up his sleeves. Everything is as it should be.

“Imagine all the eyes that can see you now, pet.”

She looks down at the play-pretend lights of the model city he paid to have spread out before her.

“How many people do you think are looking up from their windows and watching? Do you think they’ve learned that Saturday evening is when I undress my sweet pet, and they keep their binoculars ready on the windowsill?”

She doesn’t answer, she just cleans.

“I’m generous. I let them watch.” He stands up, but she doesn’t stop, just bends down to get a new paper towel. “Think of all those unfortunate people who don’t have you for a pet, sweet thing.” He approaches. “How terribly, terribly jealous they must be.”

Her arm stills when his hand clutches her hip possessively. She doesn’t know whether to keep going or not. It doesn’t much matter, as long as _he_ keeps going.

And he does. “How lucky I am.” His voice is low and tickles her neck. “To have found you, pet. And out of all the people attached to all the eyes that watch you, you come to _me.”_

A little mewl of assent escapes the back of her throat. His hand leaves her hip, traveling to her waist and ribs and underarm and voyaging slowly up her arm to the wrist that exists for him, and when his fingers encircle it they have inches to spare— _inches_ extra to wrap her up in.

“I’m going to take all your clothes off, my pet, even your fluffy socks. And I’m going to pin these lovely wrists of yours to my window and I’m going to spread your feet, because the people should be able to see what they can’t have, hmm?” He drags a finger down the side of her neck and licks up the invisible line he drew. “And maybe I’ll take my cock out and fuck you here against the glass, or maybe I’ll bend you over the couch, or maybe I’ll lay you down right in the middle of my bed. But whichever I choose, you’ll open these legs for me so I can take whatever I want. Because it’s Saturday, and you’re mine.”

 _Yes,_ this is right, _this_ is what she needs, and there’s order to the universe and there’s meaning to the world and it lies in his words and her cunt.

He’s turning her around to face him, and his hands are pulling her sweater over her head and tugging her jeans down to her ankles and stripping her gently, firmly, inexorably, and she is certain of nothing but the unrelenting truth that she was made to be undressed by these hands.

She’s naked, and he’s turning her back around and making good on his promise, and his hands splay hers in hot handprints on the glass and his feet nudge hers apart and he murmurs, “Arch your back, pet. Show me that delicious ripe ass. Good girl.”

She does, and her slick folds meet air, and she grinds back against nothing, seeking friction, seeking something of his to fill the hole inside and make her a whole person.

“So impatient,” he tuts. “You want to put on a show for the people, pet? Is that what you want? Squirming all nice and sweet and helpless?”

“Kylo,” she whines breathily.

He stills.

His hands clutch her wrists tightly, and she can feel him trying to master himself, but after a long moment he mutters “Virginia” and steps back, letting her go.

He’s never used their safeword before. She whirls around to face him. “What’s wrong?” Her hands reach for him, but he holds out a hand to ward her off and retreats.

“Nothing. I just need a minute.” He walks shakily over to the sofa, but doesn’t sit down, just bends over and leans on the arm with both hands.

She wraps her arms around herself, since he won’t let her wrap them around him. Finally she asks timidly, “Should I not have called you Kylo?”

He doesn’t look up at her. “It’s fine. I just... wasn’t expecting it. I don’t know.” He straightens up with effort, and his face is tired.

She goes to him, because it’s inevitable that she will go to him. She touches his chest softly, and his bare forearms, and his hands, and she wraps her hands around each of his index fingers and she holds on. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have anything to be sorry for. It’s me.”

She shakes her head. “You want me to call you Ben.”

His chin flinches. “You don’t need to, in the scene. I don’t want you to.”

“But you want _me_ to call you Ben.” Not his pet.

He lets loose two lungs’ worth of stored-up breath. “Yeah.”

She smiles softly. If only everything in the world could be fixed with one syllable, like they can in this moment. “Ben.”

She needs to kiss him. She rises up on her toes and takes his face in her hands and leaves her bare body to his as she kisses his chin and his jaw and his cheeks and the crinkles of his smile that nestle by his lips. “Sweet,” she tells him. “Sweet Ben.”

His arms are around her and her hand is in his hair and his lips are coaxing hers open and her tongue is brushing his before she remembers that _no,_ this isn’t what they’re doing. It’s not time yet. But her mouth doesn’t listen when she tells it to stop, and maybe they could break the rules: maybe she could wrap her arms and legs around him and let him carry her to that bed where skin and words and kisses wait.

But no. She stiffens. Because she _said_ that they would have their usual Saturday first, and whatever else happens after that, she needs to fill up with all the normal she can to withstand it—that big, momentous mystery of an _it_ that lurks somewhere in this tonight. She pulls away.

“Tie me up,” she blurts out.

He looks dazed by the loss of her lips. “What?”

“Can we resume? And can you tie me up?”

“Okay, if you want. Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why do you want to be tied up?”

She shivers and cups her elbows in her hands. “I just do.”

He takes a deep breath, steeling himself. “Alright, pet. Go to the bed.”

She doesn’t watch as he retrieves the ropes from a drawer. She barely hears it glide on tracks smoothed by money, but she hears it shut, and she lies spread-eagle on her back like he told her and she watches the ceiling and waits.

It takes a while. She’d been picturing a few double knots yanked tight, but he’s careful and methodical as he fastens the cords to some place at the corners of the bed that she can’t see—did he have hooks installed?—and then moves to her wrists and ankles, looping and knotting in some precise pattern that his fingers learned on a body that wasn’t hers. It’s snug but not painful, and when he tells her to tug she can’t pull free.

He stands by the bed. “Are you comfortable?”

She nods at the ceiling.

“Words.”

“Yes.”

His voices moves leisurely around the bed as he speaks. “You know the thing about bondage, pet? I could be on top of you in five seconds and fuck you until you scream, or I could tease you. I could go hours without touching you, sweet thing, and you’d barely even be able to squirm as your cunt drooled on my sheets.” His voice stops directly beside her head. “And _then_ I’d fuck you until you scream.”

His weight is on the mattress. He’s crawling to her, climbing on top of her, and _yes,_ he’s going to give her what her empty hole needs, but no, he holds himself over her on all fours, and when she glances down at his crotch his pants are tented but not unzipped.

“You’re completely at my mercy. And that’s how you like it, hmm, pet?”

“Please,” she entreats.

His face hovers above hers. “Please what? What do you want?”

She gulps. “What you want.”

“Do you?” His hair falls in a wavy curtain just long enough to shroud his face in shadow. His voice is shadow too.

She squirms as much as her bonds permit. “Yes.”

His face dips from her field of vision, but she doesn’t need to wonder where it went because his mouth envelops one of her nipples as his thumb descends on the other, worrying it to a sharp peak as his tongue does the same. He purses his lips around the erect bud as if whistling, but this is a much more pleasant pastime. _Much._ He sucks as he pulls away and lets her breast pop free, then hums contentedly and laves her nipple with his tongue, alternating between flat pressure and toying using his tongue’s tip. His thumb is still busy too, and her senses don’t even know which nipple to tell her about, so overwhelmed are they by the ropes and by him: the man settled between her legs like they’re the upside-down-v roof of a house drawn by a child. This is where they belong, with her body giving him a place to be and him being there.

His mouth switches to the other nipple and she moans plaintively. If she could, she would thread her fingers through his hair—this dark-haired darling suckling at her breast. But she can’t, so she squirms instead, and he chuckles.

“So impatient, hmm?”

She whines wordlessly.

He plants an open-mouthed kiss to her sternum. “Your body is heaven, do you know that, pet?” Both of his hands clasp the sides of her ribs, and his thumbs skirt the outer curves of her breasts. “If I ever met a genie, all of my wishes would be you.” His tongue dips into her navel. His hands slide down to her waist. “You warm and happy and spread out on my bed, with all this skin waiting for me. My private paradise.”

His hands have moved down to her hips by now, his elbows resting by her thighs, so it really shouldn’t take her by surprise—that first wet inhale—but it does. She jolts, and the ropes strain, and the chuckle that comes from between her thighs is honey and sin. He grasps her hips tighter and angles them up toward his mouth like he’s eating a sandwich, except what he’s eating is _her,_ and judging by the way he devours her, she’s chocolate. Or protein shakes, she supposes, or whatever he likes best. He would probably tell her so, she knows, if his mouth were free, but instead his thumb draws what might be a heart on her hipbone and it brands her and she’s his, as if she weren’t already. As if he hadn’t systematically stripped her down to her essence and had seen her as she is and stayed anyway.

He’s doing to her cunt what he wants to do to her mouth, she knows. His lips and tongue are a deafening promise of kisses to come, and she trembles and wails and takes everything he gives her and gives him everything he takes. His tongue spears her open and fucks her, and then he curves it and laps her up, and she can’t possibly survive this; she’ll break free of the bed and crush his face between her thighs and still he’ll keep taking her _there,_ higher and higher and...

His mouth is gone, and so are his hands. She gasps as she looks down to find him standing at the foot of the bed, licking his lips and wiping his chin with his palm. “That was delicious, thank you, pet.”

“No, _please,”_ she whines desperately.

“Please what?”

“Make me cum, _please,_ I’ll be good.”

He crosses his arms and pretends to consider. She knows he’s already made up his mind, but she doesn’t know what his conclusion was, and it _needs_ to be that he’ll bend back down and finish what he started, because she thinks she might cease to exist otherwise. Her biceps bulge against their restraints.

“Oh, of course I’ll make you cum, pet. Because you are good, aren’t you?” She nods eagerly. “And patient.” _No._ “So patient that I could go get my phone and send a few emails and you wouldn’t complain at all, would you, sweet thing? You’d just lie there and make even more wet for me to find when I came back.”

His hand lands on her calf, just above the rope, and he caresses her quickly and says, “Be good,” and then he’s gone.

She tries to breathe, tries to focus on making carbon dioxide out of oxygen and not how bereft her body is without him. _Inhale, hold, exhale. Inhale, hold, exhale._

She closes her eyes.

_We need to go quick and get something, sweetpea, but you wait right here, all right?_

_C’mon, he’s not gonna wait all day._

_Gimme a minute! Here, sit right here on this crate, baby, and we’ll be back before you know it._

_Tie her to the fucking dumpster if you’re so worried about her wandering off._

_No, she’ll be good, won’t you, sweetpea? Count to a hundred, and if we’re not back to get you just yet, count to a hundred again._

_I’m about to fucking leave with or without you._

_I’m coming, God! Be good, baby. I’ll be back._

_Be good._

_I’ll be back._

She’s not a body anymore, she’s a sprinting heartbeat and a silent scream. Her muscles don’t work, and neither do her lungs, and _why_ can’t she breathe, and why can’t she scream? _Alone, alone again, they left, all alone, never coming back, they don’t love you, you’re bad, they hate you, nobody loves you, gone forever, all alone._

Her chest heaves, and she finds her scream, and she uses it. “KYLO VIRGINIA STOP KYLO COME BACK PLEASE VIRGINIA VIRGINIA PLEASE KYLO PLEASE PLEASE—”

She doesn’t know where he came from or when, but he’s there, and he’s fumbling at her wrist but it’s not coming undone and _why_ isn’t he letting her go and she’s sobbing and she’s begging and she can’t breathe and it’s a year before the vicious click of scissors frees one wrist, then the other, then her ankles, and then she can curl in on herself and roll to her side but she can’t stop the sobs that rip her chest apart.

Maybe if she buries her face in arms or sheets she won’t exist: if the world can’t see her, she’ll stop being and then she’ll stop feeling because she can’t feel all of this and breathe at the same time, she _can’t,_ and when her breath starts to come in short, shallow spurts her vision fogs and an insistent voice is in her ear saying _in through your nose, out through your mouth, slow, deep breaths, sweetheart, fuck, please breathe, slow breaths, Rey, you can do it, darling, breathe in and now breathe out, just like that, breathe in through your nose, now breathe out,_ and her lungs find the air they were missing and her sobs don’t stop, but now they’re just sobs and she can handle sobs; she knows sobs.

Her arms grab for a nest of sheets that she can bury her sobs in, but when she plants her face inside, his hands are there tugging the sheets away and his voice is saying _no, sweetheart, you need to breathe, it’s going to be okay, look at me, you’re going to be okay, just look at me._

His face is as good a thing as any to watch, because watching gives her brain something to do besides think _they left me they left me they left me,_ so she applies herself to the task diligently—she clutches sheets and she watches him and breathes through the sobs. He reaches to pull a blanket up over her shaking, naked body, never letting his face leave her sight.

He’s been kneeling on the floor and reaching out to her, but now he eases himself gradually onto the bed, lying beside her but not touching, just being for her. Her sobs taste different now—less frantic, without that bitter tinge of panic. When they subside to choked, hiccupping sniffles she closes her eyes. She doesn’t need his face anymore.

_I’ll be back._

She opens her eyes. He’s still lying on his side and watching her.

She exerts herself to sit up, taking the blanket with her. He quickly follows. “Are you okay to talk about what happened? Do you want me to hold you? What do you need?”

She draws a quavering breath and looks at him. “We should end this.”

“Of course, I wouldn’t even think about resuming after y—”

“No.” She looks steadily in his eyes. “We should end _this.”_

He swallows hard. “We’ve already had one misunderstanding, so I need to be clear, when you say—”

“We should stop seeing each other.” She can’t look at him. She looks down at the bed where he kissed her.

She sees it when his hands twitch. “You can’t possibly be in the frame of mind to make that decision.”

“Don’t tell me about my frame of mind.”

He reaches out for her and she shies away. “What did I do wrong? Just tell me, and I swear, I’ll never do it again.”

“It’s not something you did. It’s who we are.”

“You keep _saying_ that, and it doesn’t mean anything, Rey, why won’t you let me care about you?”

He’s angry. That’s fine. He’s allowed to be. She pulls the blanket closer. “We had a good run, let’s leave it at that.”

He scrubs his face with his hands. “God, I feel like we’re speaking two different languages. How can you possibly call what’s between us a ‘good run?’”

She looks away. “It wouldn’t have worked.”

“It _did_ work, though, we do work!”

She looks at him. He’s bleary, disheveled, undone. “You’ve never seen me outside of this penthouse. You don’t even know me.”

He’s shaking his head before she even finishes her sentence. “No, Rey, _please_ don’t _fucking_ say that.”

She goes on. “Our worldviews, values, and lifestyles are entirely different. You have things you need to work through, and so do I, and we’re holding each other back. We’re crutches for each other, because we have this fantasy world where we get to pretend to be the people who we want to be, but it’s _not real,_ it’s just for Saturdays, and while this was just sex that was fine, but then you kissed me or I kissed you or whatever, and you keep _looking_ at me like you— I don’t even know, and there are a million reasons why this wouldn’t work. I’d hate myself for being with someone whose condo cost more than a normal person earns in ten lifetimes, and you would want to, I don’t know, dress me up and take me fancy places, and I’d hate it and you’d resent me for it and we would be miserable but we’d let it go on longer than we should because the sex is good, or I would grow to like this disgusting consumerism and become someone I hate and that would be even worse, and either way you’d leave me in the end, so we should just end it now instead.”

He’s shaking his head in disbelief, and why can’t she just make him _understand—_

“Did you ask that on purpose? To be tied up— did you ask that so you’d have an excuse to leave me?”

She gasps, and tears spring to her eyes. “That’s an awful thing to say to someone.”

“I’ve been trying to tell you all along: I’m an awful person.”

“You’re _not,”_ she protests, with tears in the back of her throat. She forces them down.

He turns away from her and stands up. Now it’s his turn to pace. She sits surrounded by ruined rope and waits for him to say whatever he needs to say.

He comes to a halt by the side of the bed and kneels down. He rests both of his arms on the sheets, palms up, straight out, with the corner of the mattress in his armpits. Not quite prostrating himself, but the effect is the same. Presenting his entire self for her appraisal.

“Rey.”

She looks at his outstretched hands, not at his face.

“Please look at me.”

She shakes her head.

“What changed from last week to now?”

She bites her lip. “Real life happened.”

“Then what changed from an hour ago?”

“Nothing.”

His voice coils tight. “An hour ago you let me kiss you, and you called me my name.”

She tucks the sheet more securely around herself. “I remembered something.”

“Can you tell me what it was?”

She looks further down, at her own lap, and shakes her head.

“You gave a lot of reasons just now for why we wouldn’t work. You said I would leave you. Why do you think that?”

“It doesn’t matter. Whether you leave me or I leave you. The longer we let it go on the more it will hurt when it’s over.”

He buries his face in the sheet for a second and makes a muffled noise that’s probably a curse. He lifts his head again. She doesn’t.

“What can I say, sweetheart, to convince you that I won’t leave you? Give me the exact words and I’ll say them and I swear on my life that I’ll mean them.”

_Count to a hundred._

_I’ll be back._

She looks at him. “I can’t.”

There’s red around his eyes. “Can’t what?”

“I won’t let myself be left. Not ever again.”

He stretches out his arms further toward her, so his fingertips are inches from her feet. “Tell me the way tonight goes that doesn’t end with you walking out the door forever.”

She holds out her hand to him, and a fire of hope roars to life in his eyes, but her words douse it. “Untie me.”

He takes her wrist gently in both hands and sets to undoing what he had done. The severed rope falls to the bed, and she gives him her other wrist. They both watch his big, hard, tender hands as his fingers set her free. _Don’t let me go. Tie me to the bed._ She sticks out her ankle to him, and he slowly unties, working surely and methodically, removing his hold on her. Because she asked him to. _Say something that will make me stay. Don’t let me leave. Don’t leave. Ben. My Ben._

The last knot is gone. He stands up heavily, wearily, with the weight of a century in his bones.

“You gave a lot of reasons, Rey. But there’s only one that matters. If you don’t want to be with me, just say it.”

 _I need you like air. When did you become my whole happiness? If I could love anybody I think it would be you._ “I don’t want to be with you.”

He sits on the bed not looking at her as she gets dressed. She goes to the drawer where he keeps her changes of clothes and she takes them too. She checks the back corners for socks. She folds them up into a tight bundle and tucks it under her arm. There are still pads and tampons in the bathroom, but he can give them to someone else: someone who isn’t broken. She glances around the room to make sure she hasn’t forgotten anything. She can’t leave any more of her behind.

She stops by his knee when she’s done. His head is bowed. His hands sit limply on the bed beside him, and his toes point in toward each other.

She swallows the pain.

She whispers, “I was the hurricane after all. Sorry.”

He doesn’t answer.

He doesn’t look up.

She doesn’t look back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Content Notes/Summary:_ Rey goes to Ben’s penthouse the following Saturday and starts cleaning the windows, although he hadn’t given her a chore. He’s surprised and dismayed to find her cleaning, and she asks if they can have their usual Saturday first and then talk afterwards. He agrees but asks if he can kiss her once before they begin the scene, and she agrees. The scene contains an exhibitionist scenario, as Ben undresses Rey and pins her against the window, talking about all the people who could be watching her. Rey calls Ben “Kylo,” and he uses their safeword to halt the scene. He clarifies that he’s fine with her calling him Kylo in the scene, but she realizes that he wants her to call him Ben outside of it, and does so and kisses him. Emotionally overwhelmed, she withdraws and asks him to tie her up. He uses ropes to tie her spread-eagle to his bed and proceeds to go down on her but stops just shy of her orgasm. He leaves the room as part of his orgasm delay teasing, and Rey has a panic attack triggered by the memory of being abandoned as a child. The italicized flashback contains what could be construed as a brief reference to an intended drug deal. Rey screams for him to release her, and he cuts the ropes with scissors after struggling to untie them. [*To avoid the panic attack and its short-term aftermath, skip over the seven paragraphs following the standalone paragraph _I’ll be back_ , and resume reading at the next italicized _I’ll be back_.*] She has trouble breathing and begins to hyperventilate, but recovers. She doesn’t share her history but tells him they should stop seeing each other because she won't let herself be left again. He tries to convince her that he wants to be with her and won’t leave, but she ends their relationship and leaves.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I am not a mental health professional, and this chapter is not intended as an accurate portrayal of a therapy session. There’s only one new tag relevant to this chapter (Therapy).

The carpet is an aggressively inoffensive greyish beige that more or less matches the walls. The framed art on the wall opposite him is a minimalist brown-green smudge that she would probably make fun of, lying naked in his arms, if he hung it in his condo.

That she _would’ve_ made fun of.

“Would you prefer that I call you Kylo, or something else?”

He shifts in the cushioned chair that’s probably ergonomically designed for physical comfort, if not emotional. “That’s fine.”

“So, Kylo, what brings you to therapy?”

He glares at her empty lap. “Aren’t you supposed to have some way of recording notes?”

“I prefer not to use a notepad during sessions, though others choose to.”

“Hmm,” he grunts skeptically, examining the end of one of the armrests on his chair.

She doesn’t say anything for a while. He knows this trick. The silence is supposed to grow so uncomfortable that your adversary concedes rather than prolong it. He wonders what she would say if she knew he was thinking of her as his adversary.

He clears his throat. “Someone said I should come. To therapy.”

“Why do you think they thought therapy would be helpful for you?”

“My father died.”

“Okay. Any other reasons?”

“Yes.” He can’t do this and look at her face. He can barely do it not looking at her face. He’s going to get to know this room’s furnishings very well.

“Have you ever been in therapy before?”

“No. I put that on the paperwork.”

“You did.” She reaches for the form on the desk behind her and reads from it. “You left the field about your reason for seeking therapy blank. You named your profession as ‘Executive’ and left your employer blank. You also said that you don’t know whether there’s a history of mental illness in your family.”

“I would’ve thought you would read the form _before_ the session.”

“I did, I’m just pointing out some things that I noticed.”

“Sounds fascinating,” he retorts drily.

“You also indicated that you never drink,” she continues, undeterred. “Are you in recovery?”

He scoffs under his breath. “No. I’m not an alcoholic. I’ve never drunk.”

“Why is that?”

He studies his left knee. “I prefer not to be inebriated.”

She lets the silence sit for a minute, but he doesn’t fill it. “You also responded that you exercise six days a week and rated your diet as ‘extremely healthy.’”

“Yes.”

“It seems like you have some good lifestyle practices working in your favor when it comes to your physical health. How’s your sleep?”

 _Last night I woke up kneeling in front of the sofa because I dreamed I’d buried my face in her lap there and she was stroking my hair._ “Fine.”

“That seems unusual for a high-powered executive. No trouble falling or staying asleep?”

“With all due respect, these seem more like questions to be asked by a physician, which you’re not.”

She smiles placidly and folds her hands in her lap. “The primary purpose of this session is for each of us to determine whether we’re a good fit. Whether you think that you can work productively with me, and I think my services can be of use to you. I don’t yet know what will or won’t be relevant, so I prefer to err on the side of asking a wide range of questions about your physical and mental health. It’s up to you whether you want to answer them.”

He looks over at her bookcase and skims the titles on the bottom row with eyes that don’t see. “I sleepwalk.”

“Ah. How often?”

“I don’t know.”

“When did it begin?”

“When I was a child.”

“How do you know that you still do?”

“I wake up sometimes.”

“In places that aren’t your bed?”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever found yourself in a dangerous situation? With the stove on, or outside your home?”

“No.”

“You live in a condo, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Does it have a balcony?”

“A terrace.”

“Then I recommend making it a priority to install a lock complex enough that you can’t open it while sleeping.”

He looks up at her. “Aren’t you supposed to ask me about my relationship with my mother, or something?”

“Would you like to talk about your relationship with your mother?”

“No.”

She leans forward and rests her elbows on her thighs. “Kylo, the point of therapy is to help make your life better. Whatever that looks like. In this instance it involves a locksmith.”

“Fine.”

She leans back in her chair. “Do you have a romantic partner?”

“What? Why?”

“If you regularly share a bed with someone, they might be able to give you more information on how often you sleepwalk.”

 _I would part with everything I own to be able to answer ‘yes’ to that question._ “No.”

“Who are the closest relationships in your life?”

“I don’t have any.”

She crosses her legs, letting the silence bloom. Finally she cuts it. “I find that difficult to believe.”

“Why is that, exactly?” he sneers.

“Because you clearly don’t want to be in therapy, but there’s someone in your life who asked you to come and you did.”

The legs of her desk taper to circles about the size of a quarter. If someone took the desk away, there would be four round indentations in the carpet as proof that it was once there. _“Was_ in my life. She’s not anymore.”

“What was your relationship to her?”

“We were... involved.”

“As boyfriend and girlfriend?”

“No.” He scratches his hand. “It’s complicated.”

“But you had a sexual relationship?” she prompts.

“Yes.”

“For how long?”

“Thirteen months.” He could’ve said a year, but it wasn’t just a year. There were dates on the calendar that came again and she was still his. Or he was still hers, at least.

“Tell me about her.”

A glob of paint under the corner of the window dried as a teardrop-shaped drip. That was careless. “She hated how much money I have. She thought it was immoral for anyone to be as rich as me. I couldn’t do anything right with her. She would never tell me what she was thinking; I always had to guess, and she would punish me somehow if I was wrong.”

There’s a clock on the wall that ticks the seconds. It’s the only sound in the world for a while.

“It seems like you’re very angry at her.”

The knot in his throat is tied too tight for words. He nods.

“It sounds like she had unreasonable expectations.”

He shakes his head and swallows. “She deserved it. To be with someone who understood her.”

“No one is a mind reader.”

“I’m certainly not.”

“How did you meet?”

“Online.”

“And your relationship was strictly sexual?”

“It was at first. Then...” He trails off.

“Finish that thought.”

He looks at the corner, where the floor lamp throws two diagonals of brightness that shade in shadows. There wouldn’t be darkness if not for the light. “I developed feelings for her.”

“What was that like?”

His huff is half-laugh, half-scoff. “Horrible. Wonderful.”

She sits in companionship with the silence. It’s _her_ ally, here.

“She used to make fun of me. Tease me. She said that she had to do it because I didn’t have an older sister.” His eyes follow the carpet along the baseboard. “Everyone else has always been too afraid of me to tease me. But not her.”

“It sounds like she wasn’t a very nice person.”

He sits up straight and looks directly at her. Because even if this is the only time he ever meets this woman, the idea of her carrying around the impression he’s given of Rey is intolerable. “She cares about people. Not just people in particular—people in general. People she’s never met, and she cares about them. Her smile is magnetic, like she has the secret to happiness and if she keeps you around for long enough maybe she’ll share it with you. She’s... liquid sunshine. She lets you take care of her if that’s something you need. She gets mad if you don’t think about the feelings of your cleaning staff, and when she teases you it’s like a private joke with just the two of you that she’s inviting you to share, like she’s saying _remember how to be happy? I know you don’t, so I’ll show you._ And when she kisses you there’s nothing bad in the world.”

She nods thoughtfully. Finally she says, “I’m going to tell you two things I noticed and ask you to react to them.”

He nods stiffly.

“Your relationship was sexual first, but none of the things you’ve told me about her have to do with sex. Why do you think that is?”

“It’s private,” he answers gruffly before realizing that that’s probably a illogical answer to give to a therapist.

“You don’t have to share it if you don’t feel comfortable. But I want to make it clear that this is a space where you can talk about sex.”

He clears his throat. “What was the other thing?”

“For all the negative things you told me about her, you used past tense, and for the positive things you used present tense.”

“Oh.” He looks down. That can’t be, because he’s angry, he’s _so_ angry, and—

“Share what you’re thinking.”

“Don’t do that,” he snaps, and is immediately mad at himself for snapping. She watches placidly as he tries to explain himself. “Listen, I’m not a touchy-feely person. My whole life is my work, and in the business I’m in there’s no other option except to be harsh and severe and not show any weakness. I can’t just talk about feelings on command.”

She’s undaunted. “How long have you felt that way? That your whole life is your work?”

He shrugs sullenly. “Ever since I started working.”

“Have you always worked in that kind of environment? I think you said harsh and—”

“Severe, yeah.”

“Is that something you enjoy?”

He scoffs. _“Enjoyment_ doesn’t come into it. It is what it is.”

“What do you like the most about your job?”

He tries, he really does, to think of an answer other than the one that springs to mind first. He wracks his brain for some redeeming quality, but it offers none. So he answers, “The salary.”

“So you enjoy the lifestyle your job permits you?”

“Yes.”

“What do you do with the money that you enjoy?”

He has to think for a second. “I collect cars.”

“That sounds fun, where do you drive them?”

“I don’t drive them. I have them.”

“Okay, what else?”

“I have a nice condo. A penthouse.” Why does he feel such an urge to justify himself to this woman he’s never met?

“That sounds great. The views must be wonderful.”

_Rey, looking up at him from her hands and knees on his living room floor. Rey, raising her arms eagerly so he can take her shirt off. Rey, lying on his chest with tangled hair and a sex-tired smile._

“Yeah.”

“Have you ever considered quitting your job? Doing something else instead?”

“What? No.”

“Really? It seems like most people have at least some idle fantasy of what else they’d rather do.”

“I mean, I joked about quitting once, but that’s all.”

“With who?”

“Her. Rey. I said...” He swallows. “I said I would quit my job and spend seventy hours a week kissing her instead.”

“And how did she react?”

“It was just a joke.”

“Sure, but what did she say?”

He rubs his forehead. “She said she would spend seventy hours a week judging my interior design.” He smiles in spite of himself. “She hated my wall art. She said the painting by my closet looks like a— male genitalia.”

“And does it? Look like a dick?”

He flushes as he grins. “I didn’t notice until she said that, and now I can never unsee it.”

“So it sounds like you approached the idea of increased intimacy couched in humorous terms?”

“Look, I was never serious about quitting my job. It was a _joke.”_

“Did you joke about things like that a lot?”

“Things like quitting my job? No.”

“Things like spending more time with her. Expanding your relationship.”

“No. Maybe. I don’t know.”

“You said she would punish you for saying the wrong thing. What was the wrong thing?”

“‘Punish’ was too strong a word. She would... rebuff me. Whenever I tried to tell her how I felt about her, she would treat it like a joke. Not in a mean way. We... we had a kind of banter, when we were... done.”

“After sex.”

“Yeah.”

“And you would try to tell her that you had feelings for her?”

“Not like that. I don’t know. It was like there was this hazy glow and she couldn’t be angry at me for anything I said then, because that was when I was allowed to be sweet with her.”

“You think she would have been angry to know that you had feelings for her?”

“No, that’s the wrong word.” He sighs exasperatedly. “She always kind of kept me at arm’s length, because she didn’t want more than our original arrangement, so she would try to sidestep discussion about anything more.”

“What was your original arrangement?”

“She would come over once a week, on Saturday evening. She would be there when I got home from the office. We would... have sex.”

“You gave her a key?”

“Yes.”

“Did you ever talk during the week?”

“No.” He scratches his hairline and looks away. “It was just Saturdays. I don’t know what she did the rest of the week. I told her...” He swallows hard. “She could sleep with other people. But I wouldn’t.” He glares into the middle distance.

“Do you think she was?” she prompts neutrally. “Sleeping with other people?”

“No.” _No one in the world could make her cum as hard as I made her cum. And I could make her laugh, besides._ _And she left._ “I don’t know.”

She doesn’t talk for a while, waiting to see if he will. He doesn’t.

Finally she asks, “Why the double standard? Why weren’t you allowed to sleep with other people too?”

He shakes his head. “It’s too messy that way.”

“Messy in what way?” she prompts.

He smiles wryly. “Acceptable levels of risk.”

“What did you feel you were risking?”

He shifts his feet on the greyish-beige carpet. “Trusting someone to use condoms with any other partners.”

“You were concerned about STIs?”

 _No. Because at some point I convinced myself that she lived wrapped in tissue paper in a snug box the rest of the week and only came out for me. When did that happen?_ He shrugs.

“Did you have an agreed-on method for checking in with each other? Making sure you were both getting what you wanted?”

“For sex, yeah. We would talk about it after. Sometimes.”

“But not for other aspects of your arrangement?”

“No.”

“How did it make you feel, when she would avoid discussing feelings?”

“Frustrated, I guess.”

“What do you think she would’ve done if you had come right out and told her that you wanted more than a sexual relationship?”

“It _was_ more, though, that’s the thing. It got to the point where it felt like we had agreed what we were to each other but hadn’t said it out loud, but it was like we didn’t even _need_ to.” He looks down to his lap and rubs his thumb.

“How did you know when you’d gotten to that point?”

There aren’t words for that night, so he gropes clumsily for a pale approximation. “I called her on the anniversary of my father’s death, and she came over and took care of me. And... we never used to kiss, not on the lips. And I didn’t undress for sex. But she kissed me and undressed me, and it was...” _the Big Bang. The first day of the universe. The whole fucking Milky Way._ “Different.”

“So there was a significant increase in both emotional and physical intimacy in one night.”

He nods.

“Was that overwhelming for you?”

His nostrils flare. “I don’t understand what this is accomplishing. There’s no point in dredging this up. She left me, all right? That’s how the story ended. I’ll save you the trouble of asking a hundred questions.”

He won’t fill the silence this time, no matter how long she lets it stretch on. He crosses his arms.

She rubs her mouth thoughtfully. Finally she says, “When you called my scheduler to set up an appointment, you asked for ten p.m., knowing that my latest available time is nine, and you offered five times my hourly rate if I agreed to the later time.”

“Nine is fine, I asked for ten because there are people who would pay a great deal to know that I’m in therapy and I had to make sure you wouldn’t take the money.”

“Ah,” she says. Nothing else.

“So?”

She glances at the clock. “We have five minutes left. If you’ll indulge me, I’d like to use one or two of them to make an observation.”

“Fine.”

“What I’ve heard from you this evening is that you prefer to exert a high degree of control over your life and the people you come into contact with. Between your career choice and your lifestyle habits, there is very little in your life that’s not subject to your control. You don’t drink because you don’t like being intoxicated. You’re very strict about what nutrition and exercise your body gets. Your profession puts you in a position of power over others. And your money makes it so you can buy almost anything you want.”

“I don’t see how the scheduling topic led here; if anything, it disproves your theory. I didn’t get the ten o’clock slot.”

“The scheduling issue itself doesn’t lead me to think you enjoy control. It’s the fact that you made sure I knew that you got what you wanted.”

He has no answer, so he doesn’t give one.

“This woman was entirely out of your control, so you had to learn a new way of interacting with her that was different from how you interact with the rest of the elements of your life. And the fact that you gave up some of the control that you value so much to her makes it that much harder that she left you anyway.”

His voice is small. “What should I do?”

“That depends on my original question. What do you want to get out of therapy? Why are you here?”

He tells the truth before he can think better of it. “I want her to be with me.”

She shakes her head. “The two of us can’t make that happen. Your goal needs to be about _you,_ not about someone else.”

“Then it’s pointless.”

“I don’t think so. Envision a scenario where you’ve been in therapy for a year and something in your life has changed for the better. What could that be?”

“I stop sleepwalking, I guess.”

“Sure, that would be good. Is that enough of a goal for you to come back every week?”

“No,” he answers honestly.

“Then what? What do you really want?”

He looks back at the place where the carpet nestles with the baseboard, and somehow, the answer is sitting there waiting for him.

“I want to be the person I was with her.”

“Okay.” She smiles. “We can work with that.” She stands up. “I’ll see you next week.”

He’s taken aback. “Wait, we didn’t talk about my father. Do I need to write a journal or something? Or make amends to people I hurt?”

“Therapy is not a twelve-step program. Any journal-writing is strictly voluntary. And we can talk about your father next week, if that’s something you want to discuss.”

He stands up. “So that’s it?”

She walks around to the desk. “That’s it. Call a locksmith. Come back next Tuesday.”

He turns to go. “Oh.”

“Kylo?”

He turns back at the door.

She smiles. “You’re going to be okay.”

For the first time since the world ended, he can almost believe it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The comments on this fic are among my favorite that I’ve ever gotten. The level of thought and analysis it’s provoked is incredibly special to me. Thanks. ❤️


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well hi, happy belated new year! Since posting the last chapter I wrote a Christmas one-shot in the Tied universe: [Yuletied](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28232637).
> 
> Please, please check the tags for this chapter, from “In Rey’s backstory:” through “Five Stages of Grief.” With any concerns, read the End Notes first for a summary/content notes.

The office is tiny, and the carpet is stained. She can’t complain. This is the only sliding-scale practice she found that had appointments available and whose scale was sufficiently sliding.

It’s snowing.

“Is this your first time in therapy, Rey?” His hair is gray, but his voice is mahogany.

She stretches the cuffs of her sweater far enough to hide her thumbs. “No.”

“How long has it been since—”

“I’m sorry,” she interrupts. “I have some things I need to tell someone, and if I don’t say them now I don’t think I will.”

“Please.” He gestures an invitation and settles back in his chair.

She slips off her shoes so she can wedge her legs into the chair with the rest of her. Solid and compact. Looking down at the stiches that her thumbs strain. “My parents died when I was five. They were in a plane crash. They’d hired a babysitter to come watch me, and their flight was so early in the morning that they left before I was awake. I had to say goodbye to them the night before, and I was mad at them for going without me, so I had smeared my lips with raspberry jam from the middle of a cookie and rubbed it on their cheeks when they kissed me goodbye. And then they died. The babysitter stayed with me for another day, until my grandmother arrived. I didn’t understand why we had to wear black and go to a church. It wasn’t even a real funeral. They never recovered their bodies.”

She takes a deep breath. “That’s what I told my first therapist.

“It’s not true.”

She glances up at him quickly, and he hasn’t moved. He doesn’t react. He leaves her room to continue.

“I’ve seen eleven different therapists. Some for just one or two sessions. None for longer than six months. I changed the story, practiced it, made it more believable. I always tried to get as much done as I could without it, but therapists always want to know about your childhood. No offense.” She looks up.

He smiles. _None taken—_ that’s what his nod says.

“I got some good things done, though, with some of them. The ones that didn’t try to pry too soon, about my parents. But a few months ago I told someone I know to go to therapy and I felt like a hypocrite. Because I’ve never done it right. Not really. And he trusted the things I told him, and I was lying. Not a real lie. But the things I didn’t tell him.

“And it’s too late for me to tell him the truth, so I need to tell it to you.”

She closes her eyes for a few seconds, digging for strength. She opens them.

“I never had a father. I mean, I did biologically, but I never knew him. My mother never said anything about him. I don’t know if she knew who he was.

“I spent much of my young adulthood realizing things about my mother. Like why she would go into her bedroom with so many different men. She would lock the door, but the walls were thin. I could hear all the noises and I didn’t understand why she let them hurt her. At least it sounded like maybe she hurt them, too.

“That wasn’t when I was the most afraid, though. At least she was herself. The worst was when her eyes would get all black and she would start sweating and she didn’t always know who I was. It was like a monster came to live in her body sometimes and I didn’t know how long he would be there or when he would come.

“I stole food, a lot. When the monster was there she didn’t want to eat. I would go to the 7-Eleven and take some jerky and Pop-tarts for us. Not the ones in the foil wrappers; those were too loud. When I first started doing it I was terrified. But when I didn’t, I didn’t have any food to give her, and that was a different kind of fear. Worse.

“For years, I would suddenly remember something and realize, oh. _That’s_ what that meant. She was a sex worker. She was an addict. The cashiers at the 7-Eleven knew I was stealing things, because why else would a kid come in and never buy anything.

“I was eight the last time I saw her. She was with a man. He’d been staying with us for a while. I don’t know if he was a john or her boyfriend or just another junkie. He had a car. There was this crooked row of cigarette burns on the fabric of the back seat—I remember that part. I was connecting the dots with my finger when he told me to get out. I did. It was behind a McDonald’s, where the dumpster was. She told me to be good and stay there and she would come back for me. He told her to tie me to the dumpster, but she wouldn’t. She told me to count to a hundred, and if she wasn’t back yet, to count to a hundred again. There was an empty milk crate. She turned it over so I would have somewhere to sit. The plastic dug into my legs.

“It was hot that day. I counted to a hundred seven times before I lost count. The McDonald’s man came out to put the garbage in the dumpster and saw me but didn’t say anything. It started to rain. I dragged the milk crate to the back corner of the dumpster, right by the wall. There wasn’t an overhang, so I still got wet, but he didn’t see me the next time he came out, when it was getting dark. It started raining harder.

“I wasn’t very cold; it was still warm out. But the rain was horrible. The way it wouldn’t stop hitting me. No matter how small I curled up, there was always some part of me that the drops would find. And they never stopped. They kept on hitting me and hitting me and I couldn’t make them stop. It was nighttime when I climbed inside the dumpster.

“I stepped up on the milk crate and used one of the trash bags to wedge the lid open enough that I could breathe. I sat nestled in garbage, and pulled up my shirt to cover my nose and mouth, and it was better than the rain. But then I thought she wouldn’t see me when she got back, so she would think that I’d left. I didn’t want her to be scared when she didn’t find me. So I climbed back out and sat back down on the milk crate right where she’d left it and I let the rain hit me.

“I don’t remember being afraid, isn’t that funny? Because I never thought that she wouldn’t come back. She always came back, sooner or later. So I waited, until a different McDonald’s man found me in the morning. He asked me where my mother was. I didn’t answer him. He went back inside. I wanted to run, but then how would she find me?

“Police came. I thought they were arresting me. They made me talk to a woman whose eyeliner was crooked. I couldn’t pay attention to what she was saying, because I was just looking at her eyeliner, and how there was this little quivering interruption in the line. She gave me a warmed-up Hot Pocket. I didn’t know if I was really allowed to eat it, or if she was trying to trap me into stealing.

“She told me I was going to stay with another family until my mother came back. I thought I could just sleep there and go back to the McDonald’s during the day to wait, but they didn’t let me. They were nice to me. They made dinner every day at the same time. I wanted to run away, back to the McDonald’s, but I didn’t know where it was.

“They were fostering another girl. She was thirteen. She lisped because there was a space in between her front teeth. She told me that if my mother didn’t come back after a few months, I could be adopted. She told me I was young and pretty enough that someone would adopt me. I didn’t understand what she meant. I’d heard about adoption as a concept, but why would _I_ be adopted, if I already had a mother? I asked her what I could do to make people want to adopt me. She said I should be nice and grateful and make them feel sorry for me.

“So I didn’t. I was rude and mean and didn’t let anyone feel sorry for me. I was in foster care for ten years. No one adopted me, because I wouldn’t let them want to.

“I didn’t find the McDonald’s until I was fifteen. The milk crate was still there, or maybe a different one. I don’t know what I expected to find. A note, maybe. She could’ve spray-painted the wall. She didn’t. I never saw her again.

“I was angry at her for a long time. I felt sorry for her, too. But I was mostly angry. I still am, I guess.

“That’s all.”

He breathes for a while, to make sure she’s really finished. “Okay,” he says. “How are you feeling now?”

She swallows the first sob, but the second bursts through.

She cries for a long time. He lets her.

Then she gives him her other truth.

_It’s not really over. It was just a dream. A nightmare. I’ll wake up and it’ll be Saturday and I’ll go to you and let you kiss me as much as you want. No, I’ll kiss you first._

“This is our fifth session, Rey. I’d like to acknowledge that. You’ve made it a month and you keep coming back.”

She nods, curled up on her chair. “And I haven’t lied to you yet. You should feel honored.” A crooked grin.

He could call her on it, point out the fact that she deflects sincerity with humor. He chooses not to. “In our first session, when you told me about your mother, it sounded like you held out hope for a long time that she would come back.”

“Yeah.”

“When did you stop thinking she would?”

“Who said I’ve stopped?” She says it lightly, like a joke.

“Do you think she’ll come back?” Perfectly neutral.

She swallows hard.

“No.”

_Fuck you, Ben, Kylo, whoever you are. I never said you could make me feel things. I hate you. I hate you. Fuck you._

The summer is hot, and the air conditioning is weak.

“It seems like your feelings toward your mother are very complicated.”

“No shit.” She bites her tongue. She’s not a person she likes tonight. “Sorry.”

“I accept your apology. Would you like to tell me why you’re feeling angry?”

“It’s not at you.”

“Who are you angry at?”

“My mother, I guess.”

“Why?”

“She made me be _her_ mother.” She scrubs her palms on her shorts. “I fed her and took care of her, and she let me think that that was normal. She let me grow up that way—taking turns being each other’s responsibility. She didn’t _tell_ me.”

“Didn’t tell you what?”

“What a mother is supposed to do. Or a kid.”

“Do you think she knew?”

“She knew better than I did,” Rey snaps.

“I’m not excusing any part of your mother’s neglect, Rey. I’m sincerely asking if you think she knew what a mother is supposed to do.”

“Yeah. She did.” The tear is hot and angry, and she dashes it away impatiently. “Because sometimes she did it. She would make Spaghetti-O’s on the hot plate. She called it the stove. There was this set of kids’ dishes she got for me—they were chipped and faded, but you could still see the airplanes painted on them. She taught me to count. She taught me to read. She sat on my bed and sang me lullabies.” It’s not quite a sob, more a strangled dry compression of lungs. “She knew.”

“Do you think it would have been easier if you hadn’t had those periods of being cared for?”

She shakes her head. “That was how I learned what to do. So I could take care of her.”

“So you knew how to feed her?”

“I couldn’t steal the Spaghetti-O’s from 7-Eleven. Or the Cup Noodles. They were too bulky. I couldn’t hide them in my pants. I couldn’t cook anything for her.”

“Do you feel guilty about that?”

“No.” She looks down at her lap. The second tear arrives. “Maybe.”

He waits for her.

“I’m not crying because I’m sad, I’m crying because I’m angry.” She wipes both cheeks, just in time for two more tears.

“Okay.” He gives her space. A beat. Another. “What are you angry about?”

“I just told you.”

“It seems like there’s another reason.”

“What, having to steal food before I started elementary school to feed my addict mother isn’t enough?” She chokes a bitter laugh.

“It’s more than enough. You don’t need to justify feeling angry. It seems like there may be another reason, and I want to give you the opportunity to share it if—”

_“She didn’t tie me up!”_

He lets her weep. He lets her raise her voice and say, “She didn’t tie me to the dumpster, and if she had then maybe the police wouldn’t have been able to take me away before she got back, and I still would’ve been there, and he _told_ her to tie me up but she didn’t! She said I would be good! And I _was!_ I stayed in the rain for her and she let the police take me away!” She’s sobbing now, but the last part is still important to get out. “I sang her lullabies and I gave her food and she didn’t even tie me to the dumpster, and I’m _so, so angry!”_

It helps afterwards to have said the words. Only a little. But it’s something.

_Would you take me back? If I promise to be good? You could do anything you want to me, I don’t care. I would live in your bed if you want. Whatever you want. I would even let you spend money on me._

“I spent a lot of time thinking that the world was fair. I mean, not fair, but there was some order to it. If you did one thing, another thing would logically result. Some sort of preordained cause and effect.”

He’s wearing a cardigan. The fall’s first snap of cold was in the air this morning. He peers over his glasses. “Do you still think that?”

“No.” She rubs one thumb with the other. Self-comforting. “’Cause then she would’ve come back, right?”

“You’ve said that you purposely alienated your foster parents so none of them would adopt you. Do you want to talk more about that?”

She shrugs. Just one shoulder. “What is there to say?”

He shrugs too. “You tell me.”

She should start wearing sweaters. They’re not quite like being held, but better than nothing. “A few of them thought of themselves as saviors. They saw this sullen, scowling, skinny kid and decided that _they_ would be the ones to get through to me. They were convinced that there was a hurt, sad girl inside who needed them. But they all gave up eventually. When I stuck it out long enough.”

“That must have been very tiring.”

“What?”

“To feign hostility that you didn’t feel. To constantly push away affection.”

“I guess. Yeah. It wasn’t even a question, though. It was something I needed to do for her.”

“You were never tempted to let them care about you?”

She swallows. “No. I don’t think so.”

“Why?”

“Because she was going to come back, and what if she found me with another woman who I said could be my mother?” She studies the hem of her sleeve.

“But she didn’t.” He says it softly but matter-of-factly.

“But she didn’t,” she echoes. “And that’s why I stopped thinking the world is fair.”

_I’m really sad. If I could tell you something, I think that would be it. I’m really sad, Ben. With me and without you. It’s a lot._

“Is the winter always harder for you, mood-wise?”

She’s bundled in sweaters. It’s not enough. “No. Not particularly.”

“I’m worried about you, Rey.”

She didn’t say her eyes could cry. Rude. “I’m okay.” She wipes her cheeks resentfully with the back of her hand.

“Why do you think this is a difficult time for you?”

She shakes her head. “Everything seems hard.” It’s not an answer.

He waits. The radiator clangs to life.

It feels like defeat to say it out loud. That’s why she whispers. “I miss him.”

“Ben?”

“Yeah.” She blinks out another pair of tears and wipes her nose.

“What do you miss about him?”

“Everything.” She gasps wetly.

The radiator pings and pops.

She soaks up tears with her sleeve. “The night I left, he was mad. He asked me why I wouldn’t let him care about me.” She sniffles. “I thought it was a rhetorical question. I don’t know why. But he was really asking, I think. He wanted to know.”

“What would your answer have been?”

“I had reasons. Good ones. That were logical and rational and made sense.”

“What were they?”

Her gulp is accidentally a sob. “I don’t know.”

_I’ve been remembering the good parts more often lately. Your smile. Your arms around me. How loved I felt when you fed me. It’s funny. I think I thought that if I let myself feel things then floodgates would open and a wave of built-up sadness would flood through and crush me alive. It felt like that for a while. But I didn’t die. And I’ll never not be sad, a little. Sometimes a lot. But not so much that the sadness drowns me._

_Goodbye, Mommy._

“You seem thoughtful tonight.” He has the window open a few inches. It’s spring.

“Do I?” She rouses herself and shifts in her chair, uncrossing her legs.

“What are you thinking about?”

She smiles softly. “It feels like I’ve gotten over the worst of my grief about my mother. That’s what I came here for, and I kept coming back. And I did it.”

He has lots of smiles. Some are just little eye crinkles. Some are grins. This one is a grin. “You should be very proud.”

“I am.”

“What’s changed for you in our time together?”

“There were a lot of things I used to tell myself and I don’t think I realized until I said them out loud. Like how my mother should’ve tied me to the dumpster. I think admitting to myself that those were things that I thought helped me see how wrong they were. And how much I relied on them for how I approached the world.” She smooths her sundress over her thighs thoughtfully. “I don’t remember if I told you what Ben said one time. That his parents didn’t take care of him, and he thought if he could take care of me it would make that better. Things like that.”

There’s a quizzical frown that sits on his eyebrows. “What do you mean, things like that?”

“That’s one of the things that I realized was wrong when I thought about it rationally. That taking care of someone in a sexual relationship, or being taken care of, can’t replace an experience you should’ve gotten from your parents.”

He pulls his left earlobe. He does that when he’s thinking. “I want to make sure I’m understanding you right. Let me know if I’m reflecting this incorrectly. What I hear you saying is that you’ve come to the conclusion that taking care of someone in a romantic or sexual partnership isn’t a substitute for receiving parental care.”

She feels defensive, though she doesn’t know why. “Yeah.”

“Do you think it’s less valuable because of that?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“The care that you got from Ben doesn’t fill the gap of the care that you didn’t get from your mother. Does that mean that being taken care of by Ben didn’t count?”

“No, not that it didn’t _count,_ but...” She shrugs, annoyed. “I don’t need it.”

He crosses his hands in his lap. “I think perhaps I’ve been steering you wrong, Rey. I need to apologize for that. It seems like you’ve been equating your grieving process for your mother with your grieving process for your relationship with Ben. I didn’t realize how intertwined they seem to be for you.”

He waits for her reaction, and she nods.

“There’s a difference, though, that’s vital. You can’t turn back time and have a secure, nurturing childhood relationship with your mother. But you can still have a caring romantic relationship. If that’s something you want.”

Her throat is tight, suddenly. She shakes her head. “It’s been more than a year. He’s moved on.”

“I didn’t mean with Ben, necessarily.”

Why do her eyes sting with tears? She’s supposed to be better. She’s supposed to be _happy,_ damn it. “I don’t want it.”

“You don’t want a romantic relationship, or you don’t want a relationship with Ben?”

“I don’t want a relationship that’s not with Ben.” Her heart is racing. Her blink smudges tears.

He doesn’t say it. He waits for her.

“I want a relationship with Ben.” Her cheeks are wet, and her face is hot, and her heartbeats are running a race with themselves, but she’s smiling. Why is she smiling? “I don’t know why I said that.” She wipes her eyes hurriedly so she can see clearly.

“Is it true?”

“I don’t know. I think so. Yes.”

“Where are your tears coming from?”

“I’m happy. And sad.”

“Why sad?”

“Because what if I’m too late?”

“You got here when you got here. This is the right time for you.”

“But what if he doesn’t want me anymore?” There’s a second pair of floodgates. She was so focused on the first that she didn’t even see these. And behind these are fear.

“Maybe he does, maybe he doesn’t. But your mother left you next to a dumpster twenty-two years ago and today you’re sitting in my office saying you’re ready to let someone care about you. You’re an extraordinary person, Rey. Either way, I know you can handle it.”

Her hands are shaking. “I don’t know what to do.”

He smiles. “It’s a lot. Sleep on it. Think about it. You could call him. You could write him a letter. You could hold off on contacting him until you’ve explored these feelings some more. You have lots of options.”

“Okay.” Her head is swimming. She tries to calculate the distance from this building to his. At this time of the evening, it’s probably not more than twelve minutes by cab. She could be in Ben’s arms in twelve minutes.

He pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “I’m proud of you, Rey. I’ll see you next week.”

She doesn’t get a cab. She goes home to sleep on it. There’s not much sleep that happens, in point of fact, but she gives herself the night. And the next day. And the next night. She waits for the feeling to pass—for the certainty to diminish.

It doesn’t.

When she calls him, it’s on Thursday at 10:43 a.m. The time is important, she thinks. Because if she calls him at night, he might think she was drunk, or horny, or impetuous. If she calls him on Saturday, he could think she just wanted a Saturday from him. She doesn’t. So she calls him on Thursday. At 10:43 a.m. Sitting right in the center of her couch.

She presses the button to dial and brings the phone to her ear. She keeps waiting for her hand to shake, or her breath to quiver. They don’t.

Not until she hears his voice, anyway.

“Rey?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Summary/content notes:_ This chapter gives glimpses of Rey’s process in the therapy during the year plus following her breakup with Ben. She tells her therapist that she’s been in therapy numerous times before but has always lied about her childhood. The false story she told is that her parents died in a plane crash when she was five. She tells this therapist the true story: her mother was a sex worker and drug addict who alternately cared for and neglected Rey when she was young. Rey stole food during the periods when her mother was not taking care of her, and considered caring for her mother her responsibility. When she was eight, her mother and the man she was with left Rey next to a McDonald’s dumpster, telling her that they would be back. Rey spent the rest of that day and night there, at one point climbing inside the dumpster to escape the rain. She was found by a McDonald’s worker who called the police, and Rey was put in foster care. She learned that if her mother didn’t come back in a certain amount of time she would be eligible for adoption, so she was hostile with all her foster parents to ensure that none of them adopted her, because she firmly believed her mother would come back. In therapy, Rey works through the five stages of grief relating to her mother and Ben. She unexpectedly arrives at the realization that she wants a relationship with Ben and ends the chapter by calling him.


	14. Chapter 14

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

Her heart hammers against her ribs. “You answered.”

“You called.” There’s noise in his background that she can’t identify.

“Are you at work?”

“No. I don’t... no.”

“Can I talk to you?”

“Yes.”

“I mean, in person. Not on the phone.”

“Yes.”

“Maybe we could get coffee? Or go for a walk? Or somewhere that’s not...” She wonders if he can hear her blush.

“I moved.”

“Oh.” Her stomach plummets.

“To Brooklyn. I didn’t mean...” He trails off. “Not far.”

She breathes again. “Okay. Maybe tomorrow? I get off work at three. I could come after that?”

“Come to Brooklyn?”

“Is that okay?”

“Sure. If you want to.”

“Do you not want me to?”

“No. I do.”

“Okay. Can you text me a coffee place?”

“Sure.”

“Okay. Well...”

“Thank you. For calling.”

She bites her lip. “Of course. See you tomorrow, then.”

“Tomorrow.”

She hangs up quickly, so she has the rest of the day to replay the conversation and cringe at everything she said. They were like strangers, almost. Worse than. Stiff and stilted and bad at words.

That doesn’t explain why she can’t stop smiling.

She wears a sundress. A yellow one, with pockets. And sandals. Because she wants to. She debates putting on a cardigan, but it’s hot for May.

The subway ride is long. She wonders for the hundredth time in the past twenty-eight hours why he moved to Brooklyn. She wonders if he’s involved with someone. She wonders if he’ll look the same. If he’ll smell the same. If she’ll get close enough to find out.

She wonders if he’s even a fraction as terrified as she is.

This was a mistake, probably. Definitely. She should’ve waited to call him until she knew the words to say. Until she was more whole. She’s not ready. She’s not ready.

He’s sitting on a bench by the coffee shop. She sees him only a second before he sees her. She doesn’t recognize him at first, because he’s wearing jeans. Jeans and boots and a dark gray tee-shirt. His hair is longer. Not long, but longer. He stands when he sees her. He doesn’t smile. There might be a sort of softening around his eyes, but she can’t say for sure through the cloud of nerves that threatens to smother her as she approaches.

She stops a few feet away. He seems taller. Maybe it’s the boots, or maybe he’s always been this exact height and her memory simply rejected the notion that he could be this tall. This broad. She swallows, but there’s no moisture there to wet her tissue-paper tongue. “Hi.”

He leans forward, weight on his toes, and she involuntarily flinches backward at the prospect of being touched by this nigh-stranger, and he shuffles backward. “Hi.”

She immediately starts mentally kicking herself, but now it’s too late, she can’t touch his arm or kiss his cheek or breach the impenetrable layer of air that separates them.

He clears his throat. “It’s a nice afternoon. If I get the coffees to go, would you like to walk?”

She nods, too eagerly. “Yeah.”

“I’ll be right back.” He’s inside before she can offer to... she doesn’t know. Pay for the coffees, or keep him company, or do anything besides what she does, which is stand by the bench he vacated and look around this place that’s home to him now. It feels slower than Manhattan. Slightly softer around the edges. Like him.

A man who looks like he wants to be on a bike goes by on a bike.

“Here you go.” Ben’s at her elbow, holding out a to-go cup.

She takes it hastily. “Thanks.”

He gestures _shall we?_ and they do. They start walking down the block, clutching the coffees that give them something to do besides maintain a distance sufficient that no one could possibly mistake them for a couple.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and she glances over at him quickly. “I should’ve offered to send a car for you.”

“It’s okay, I—” she says at the same time that he says, “I don’t use— oh. Sorry.”

“Sorry.”

“No, you go. Please.”

She shoves her unoccupied hand in her pocket. “I was just going to say, I didn’t mind. It was an adventure. I’ve never taken the A this far.”

“Oh. Okay.”

They stop for the light. She takes a sip. “What were you going to say?”

“What?”

“When we talked at the same time.”

“Oh. I don’t use the car service anymore. That’s why I didn’t think of it. And I was surprised. That you called.”

The light changes.

She doesn’t say anything as they cross. Neither does he. It isn’t until they reach the opposite curb that she asks, without looking at him, “How are you doing?”

“Good.” He clears his throat. “I’m good. And you?”

“Yep,” she nods. “Good. Me too.”

She takes a desperate sip of coffee. So does he.

“You’re wearing jeans,” she observes bluntly.

“Yeah.” She’s not looking at him, but she can hear the quiet smile in his voice. At least she still has that.

“I almost didn’t recognize you.” She glances over at him with a quick smile, and he glances at her too, so their smiles meet for a quarter of a second, before she hurriedly looks ahead.

“I would’ve worn something nicer, but I came straight from work. Well, volunteering.”

“You volunteer?”

“Yeah.”

“On a Friday during the day?”

“Yeah?” It’s half a question.

“No, I just meant... I’m surprised you could get away. From work.”

They come to a stop at another corner. “Oh. No, I quit.”

She looks up at him quizzically.

“I quit my job,” he clarifies. Like he could mean anything else.

“Why?”

The light changes.

He shrugs. “It was time.”

She doesn’t realize she needs to start walking until he steps forward. “Oh. Wow.”

“Yeah.”

They walk through a shaft of sunlight that spills down the middle of the road. They don’t have _that_ in Midtown.

“Rey?”

“Yeah?”

“I meant to say at the beginning. You look—” He looks at her quickly, glowing in sun, then back at the road. “You look really nice.”

“You do too.”

They walk the next block a half a foot closer.

“I’m thinking about maybe trying to go back to school. I got a promotion at work.” The coffees are long gone now, cups padding a trash can liner a dozen blocks back.

“That’s amazing, Rey.”

She shrugs. “It pays a little more, and I have more flexibility to set my hours. Not much. But it’s something.”

“They’re lucky to have you.”

She looks over at him, grinning. “Have I ever even told you what I do?”

“No. But anyone would be lucky to have you.”

“How did you quit?” They’re walking close enough that the back of her hand has brushed the back of his once or twice. Maybe three times. The sun is thinking seriously about setting. The straps on the back of her sandals are rubbing her heels. “Please tell me it was some dramatic exit.”

“Not particularly. Sorry to disappoint you. I submitted my resignation letter.”

“That’s all? You didn’t make a dramatic announcement? They didn’t have security escort you out? You didn’t send a company-wide email detailing all your grievances?”

“Next time I quit a job, I’ll call you for a consult first.”

She scoffs in agreement. “You obviously need to. Why did you decide to volunteer?”

He grins sheepishly. “I was going to get another job. A real one. As a dishwasher or something.”

_“You?_ Washing dishes? You’re far too delicate for manual labor.”

He starts to lunge toward her, and she squeals. He remembers himself, though. He doesn’t grab her or say what he would’ve growled a year and a half ago. _I’ll show you delicate, pet._ She shivers. He sees.

“Are you getting cold?”

“No. Tell me the rest of the story. Why didn’t you get a real job?”

“Your voice in my head.”

“What?” She turns away to hide her flush, under the pretext of looking down the cross street to decide where they should meander next.

“I figured there are people who actually need those jobs, and I shouldn’t take one away from them for my personal redemption project.”

For about three seconds she’s in very real danger of telling him that he’s never been more attractive to her, and meaning it.

“So I decided to volunteer instead. After I moved. I found a food bank that agreed to take me twenty hours a week. I had some romantic notions of handing out food boxes to grateful recipients, I think.”

She grins. “And then reality intruded?”

“Only the staff does distributions, for client privacy. So I thought maybe I’d be sorting cans. Packing boxes. That sort of thing.”

“But?”

“They mostly save those tasks for the one-off volunteers. Corporate groups, and scout troops and families.”

“So what did they need you to do?”

He smiles. “Break down boxes. Help move them, once in a while, when a new shipment arrives. But mostly collect the empties and break them down and stack them up and carry them out for recycling. Four hours a day.”

This time, when the back of her hand brushes his, it’s on purpose.

They find a park bench from which to watch the evening arrive. She slips her sandals off so her feet can feel the grass. His hand rests on the wood between them. So does hers. Not touching. Not looking.

Quiet. Green. Peaceful.

“I’ve been seeing a therapist.”

“Me too.”

“And I don’t know what my upstairs neighbors are doing, but I swear, three mornings a week they drag every single piece of furniture they own to a different spot. The world’s most indecisive interior design.”

Her sides hurt from laughing, and so do her cheeks. She’s shifted to face him on the bench, with one leg tucked up into her skirt on the slats. “Oh, you poor baby. You’ve never lived below someone, have you?”

“How do people _do_ it?”

“You can thump on the ceiling with a broom handle, you know, when it gets unbearable.”

“What? That’s allowed?”

She chortles. “Yes. Per the universal rule of neighbor etiquette, that’s allowed. But use sparingly. And you should go upstairs and introduce yourself with baked goods first.”

“What, mini muffins on a platter spelling out B-E-N?”

She gasps with laughter and wipes hysterical tears. “Yes. Oh my God. Yes. Please do exactly that, and report back.”

“Whatever you say.”

“There’s a fusion place around the corner, I think.” He thumbs along the map on his phone. Its screen is the only nearby light besides the park lampposts. “Do you like fusion?”

“Fusion isn’t a cuisine. What is it, Thai and Italian? Ethiopian and British?”

“That sounds like an _awful_ business model.”

“What?”

“Ethiopian and British? I think that might be the most effective way to ruin Ethiopian food.”

She giggles. “Let’s have Ethiopian then.”

“Ethiopian it is.” He stands and holds out a hand for her.

“Wait, I need to put my sandals on.” She eases the fake leather straps over her heels and winces.

“What’s wrong?”

“Blisters.”

He’s aghast. “Why didn’t you say something?”

“I didn’t feel them until just now! I would’ve worn sneakers or something if I’d known we would be walking seventeen miles.”

“Sneakers and a sundress?” His smile is bright in the dark.

“Oh please, you live in Brooklyn.”

“What does that mean?”

“You can’t _possibly_ tell me that sneakers and a sundress is the most hipster outfit you see on a daily basis.”

“Okay, that’s fair.”

She gasps. “Wait.”

“What?”

“You know what _hipster_ means?”

“You took your sandals off, didn’t you.”

She swallows a bulging mouthful of lentil-laden injera. “No one can see my feet. That’s the point of a corner booth.”

“People get corner booths so they can let their blisters breathe?”

“Ew.” She scrunches her nose and dives in for a hefty pinch of okra. “You’re going to ruin my appetite.”

He laughs and tears off a new strip of the spongy bread. “I don’t think there’s any danger of that.”

“You never know. Do you actually like the green beans better than the cabbage, or are you leaving the cabbage for me?”

“The green beans are much better. I hoped you wouldn’t notice.”

_“What?_ The cabbage is the best dish on this platter.”

“We should eat Ethiopian together more often.”

“Why?” She takes a swallow of spiced tea.

“Because your incorrect food opinions complement my correct ones.”

“Where’s the manager? I need to complain about being seated with this boorish tablemate.”

“You would have to put your sandals on to go find him though, so...”

“I’m ordering a Lyft.”

“Ben. You said yourself that your apartment is like two blocks away.”

“Will you let me carry you?”

“There’s no need. Don’t be silly.”

“Can you walk two blocks?”

“Of course.”

“How?”

“Barefoot.”

“I’m ordering a Lyft.”

“I can’t believe you would deign to live in a walk-up.”

“I can’t believe you’re walking upstairs with bare feet.”

“I can’t believe you’re wearing jeans. You’re a person who wears jeans. Imagine.”

“I can imagine, very easily. Particularly when I get dressed in the morning. In jeans. I’m this one. Watch your step.”

“We should make mini muffins. For your upstairs neighbors. Do you have muffin ingredients? Are you a person who bakes now, too?”

He scoffs as he opens the door. “Jeans are one thing, but _baking?_ Here, give me your sandals. The switch for the hall light is next to your right shoulder.”

“Ben! The parquet floors are so nice!”

“I don’t know what that means. Use the bathroom through there to wash your feet. Second door on the left. You can use any towel.”

“Are you worried I’m going to get your pretty parquet floors dirty?”

“I’m worried you’ve contracted a horrible foot infection.”

“From walking up two flights of stairs? Exactly how dirty is your building, anyway?”

“Wash your feet.”

“Bring me Band-aids after.”

“Okay. Do you want tea?”

“No, just water. No ice. Wait, do you have lemonade?”

“No. I have lemons.”

“And sugar?”

“No.”

“Then how can we make lemonade?”

“I never said we could make lemonade.”

“Ben! The Moroccan tile is so nice!”

“I don’t know what that is. Wait, did you say ice or no ice?”

“No ice. Bring me Band-aids!”

“Wash your feet!”

This sofa of his is leather, too. But not a low, sleek, self-important impracticality anymore. It’s brown. Tufted. Lived-in. There’s a scuff on the end of one arm.

“Have you ever used the fireplace?” They’re sitting at opposite ends, with their feet propped up beside each other in the middle. She stuffed the front of her skirt between her legs to stop it from sliding up her thighs. Her feet are soft and clean, and he brought her Neosporin besides Band-aids, so her heels feel safe and happy.

“Not yet.”

“But you’re going to?”

“That’s the plan.”

“Exposed brick _and_ a fireplace. Living the dream.”

“I didn’t know you were so enthusiastic about décor.”

“I am when it’s nice.”

“So you’re saying the penthouse wasn’t nice?”

She gulps her water and shrugs innocently. “You said it, not me.”

“What?”

“You just said, _the penthouse wasn’t nice.”_

“You know, with your way with words, I think my old employer might want to hire you. I hear there’s a fairly senior vacancy.”

“Nah, they couldn’t afford me.”

“Oh yeah? What would it take?”

“Exposed brick and a fireplace.”

“You know you could get those things on a director’s salary.”

_“What!?_ How?”

“Money can be exchanged for goods and services.”

“Wait, you know _memes_ now?”

“What’s a meme?”

“These random gaps in your knowledge become more unsettling the sparser they get.”

At some point she goes to the bathroom, and so does he, and later he opens the tall, narrow living room windows to show her the flower boxes hooked onto the railing outside and asks her advice for what to grow in them, and the only plant she’s ever managed to keep alive for an extended period of time is a peace lily, which thrives indoors on benign, sunlight-free neglect, so she can’t help him, but they end up sitting on the floor by the window, her leaning against the back of the big easy chair and him against the wall. The floor lamp that he turned on when they got home is far away: all the way in the other corner of the room. They’re hiding from it.

It’s after midnight. She can almost imagine the distant traffic is cicadas.

He rubs one bicep with the opposite thumb. “Did you not drink at dinner because I don’t?”

“No. Not really. I didn’t think about it. I don’t mind not drinking when I go out.”

“You can, if you want. Around me, I mean. I’m not an alcoholic or anything. I just don’t drink.”

She leans her head back against the chair and smiles. “Okay.”

“I meant it.” He swallows. “What I said earlier. You look really nice, Rey. Beautiful. You look happy.”

“I am.”

“In general, or right now?”

“Yeah.”

“Have you been seeing anyone?” he blurts out, then smiles wryly. “I guess I should’ve asked that about eight hours ago, huh? Because—”

“No.” Quickly. Quietly. “I’m not seeing anyone. Are you?”

“No.”

She’s trembling all of a sudden.

“Are you cold? I’ll get a blanke—”

“No. I’m not cold.” She looks down at his ankles, crossed comfortably on the parquet floor. “I’m scared.”

“Scared of what?” She’d forgotten exactly how tender his voice can be.

“It feels too easy.”

He waits for her to elaborate. She smiles.

“Did you learn that from your therapist?”

“Learn what?”

“Not asking a follow-up question. Just letting the other person explain in their own time.”

“I don’t know. I’ve never thought about that. Yeah, I guess.”

“Do you like them? Your therapist?”

“She’s wonderful.”

“She helped you quit your job?”

“Mm hmm.”

“What made you decide you wanted to?”

His voice is deep in the dark. “When I first met with her, I didn’t know I was supposed to have a goal. I didn’t know that was a thing, in therapy. So I wasn’t prepared to answer the question on the form, and I wasn’t prepared when she asked me. I answered honestly. You’d left two weeks before. I wanted you to come back to me. That’s all I wanted. That’s what I told her my goal was.”

“But?”

“She didn’t let me use that as a goal. She said it had to be about me, not getting someone else to do something. And then I knew what my goal was. I didn’t know how I hadn’t seen it right away. I wanted to be the person I was with you.” He shrugs with a smile. “From there, it was easy. Well, not _easy,_ but straightforward. The only version of myself I’ve ever liked is the one I was in bed with you. And the first step to being that person all the time was to quit my job. So I did.”

“Are you happy?”

He considers for a long moment. “I’m often happy.”

“Why aren’t you, when you’re not?”

“I miss you a lot, Rey.”

He can’t see her tears, probably, in the dimness, but he can almost certainly hear the smiling sob lodged in her throat. “I miss you too. A lot.”

“I’d forgotten how easy it is to be with you.”

“That’s why I’m scared.”

“Would you do something for me?” His voice feels even lower than before. “Would you come sit on my lap?”

“Why?”

“I’m scared too.” He huffs shakily. “Terrified. Because if you leave me again I’ll never get to hold you.”

She doesn’t think, much, before she crawls over to him and pulls up the skirt of her springtime-yellow dress so she can sit on his lap, in his arms, with her legs on either side of his and her arms nestled between them and his wrapped around her back and her head tucked under his chin. If she’d thought about it first, she would have done it anyway.

“You know what I used to do on Saturdays?” she asks his chest.

He shakes his head.

“I took a bath, so when I shaved it’d be extra close. I shaved my legs, my pussy, and my armpits. I shaved my toes. I prepped for anal, in case you wanted it. I made sure the clothes that you asked me to wear were clean. I went to the laundromat if they weren’t. I plucked the stray dark hairs that grow around my nipples. I plucked my eyebrows and exfoliated my face. I pushed back my cuticles and filed my nails, and cut them if they need it. I washed my hair and dried it. Saturday was the only day of the week that I dried my hair. Every other day I just put it up in a ponytail wet. I didn’t masturbate past Wednesday, so I would be extra sensitive for you on Saturday. And I’m not complaining that I did those things. I wouldn’t have done them if I didn’t want to. It made me happy to be a fantasy. But it only works if it’s only Saturday. What if we had sex on Wednesdays too? I would have to give up my whole evening to get ready, if I wanted to do my Saturday routine. I would have to stop masturbating altogether, if I wanted to be as sensitive for you in the middle of the week as I was on the weekends. And what if we did Mondays too? I would start getting razor burn from shaving. My hair would get damaged from being dried so often. I would have to go to the laundromat all the time. If we were in a...” she draws a quivering breath, “relationship, it wouldn’t just be a matter of Saturdays more often. I don’t know if you’d still want me.”

One of his hands has made its way up to her head, to cup it to his heart.

His chest rumbles against her ear. “If someone had asked me two and a half years ago to design my ideal woman, you know what I would’ve said?”

She shakes her head against him.

“I would’ve said a lot of things that describe you. Strong, brunette. A submissive. Smart. Gorgeous. I probably would’ve said some things that aren’t you. Polished. At ease with wealth. There are some things that I wouldn’t have even thought to list. A smart mouth. The way you let me see you cry when I’m fucking you. How much you care about strangers.” His arms tighten around her. “Here’s the thing, though. I could have made a checklist of a hundred things I wanted, and maybe you were only eighty of them. But love isn’t a checklist. It’s just... love.”

She doesn’t even bother squeezing her eyes closed to try to stop the tears.

“I don’t want you to stop masturbating. I want you to shave whenever the hell you want. I want you with wet hair. I don’t give a shit about your cuticles. I don’t want Saturday more often. I want Sunday, and then Monday, and then Tuesday after that. Fuck, Rey.” The hitch in in voice is quiet, but she can hear it because her ear is pressed to the source. “I want to watch you eat. I want to fill two glasses of water from the fridge door filter while you wash your feet. I want you on your period with hairy legs. I want to spread you out on my bed on a random weeknight and fuck you. I want to bring you home and _not_ fuck you. Everything about you is what I want, because it’s you. You are the checklist.”

He kisses the top of her head.

“I love you.”

She sits up. She rests her hands on his shoulders. His hands settle on the small of her back. His face is a breath away.

“I need to tell you something, okay?” she asks tremulously.

He nods.

“You didn’t need to quit your job for me, or move, or volunteer, okay?” She paws at his chest, like that’ll help him believe her. “You didn’t have to change anything, because I loved you already. I need you to know that, okay? I loved you already.”

“Rey.” She can hear it in his inhale, when his heart trips over her. “I’m going to kiss you now.”

_Yeah._ She nods.

She thought she knew about kisses. She thought he’d taught her, if no one else. She thought nothing could be better than that night in his naked arms.

She was wrong.

His arms lock her to him, and there are still clothes between them, but clothes are less than nothing, because there’s nothing else left. No hesitation. No secret hurt hiding behind a smile. The person kissing him is her. Herself. The one she accidentally showed him two years ago and he loved her anyway. He loved her because.

When she kisses him, she swears she can taste his soul. It tastes like tears. Happy ones.

“Ben.”

“Hey.” He cups her head, strokes the sides of her hair with both hands. His thumbs wipe her wet cheeks.

She’s not sure if she’s laughing or crying, but it doesn’t much matter because now she’s kissing him again, and nothing in the world matters besides that. She locks her arms around his shoulders and presses even closer toward him, down onto him, and _oh,_ how she loves him and _oh,_ she could do this all night. Kiss him and love him and cry.

He’s at least as hungry for her as she is for him, and her lower back couldn’t escape his hands if it wanted to, but it doesn’t, not ever. She moans and writhes against him in an agony of wanting more and more and forever, and she’s so drunk on his mouth that she almost forgets about the other part until it dawns on her that the ridge beneath her isn’t just a crease in his jeans.

She thought she’d lost this. The fervor, the impatience. The blinding need. She thought her body had lost the knack for all-consuming desire sometime in the last year and a quarter, after it lost him. But it’s not gone; it was just waiting for him. If she had words she would tell him how momentous this is: this wanting. She would tell him it’s all his. But instead she clings to his shoulders as he wedges a foot beneath him and stands up, picking her up with him.

She automatically locks her ankles around his back, then winces with a hiss.

“What?” He searches her face. “What’s wrong?”

“Blisters,” she explains, and his strong hands dip under her skirt to hold the underside of her thighs so she can unhook her feet and let them dangle at his sides. But then she starts kissing her, and then he starts rubbing her front up and down against him as he shuffles to the bedroom, and her feet don’t just dangle, they twitch and arch and rub ineffectually at the side seams of his jeans.

“Please,” she whines against his lips. “Be naked now.”

He grins. “I’m working on it, sweetheart.”

“Need you. I need you.”

“I need you,” he echoes, and then they’re in his bedroom and he’s flipping the switch to turn on the lamp and there’s color in the world and her dress is gold and his lips are kiss-red.

He sets her down. Slowly. She alights barefoot, and his floor is smooth under her feet and his eyes on her neckline are reverent. But he doesn’t unzip her dress, like she thought he would. He pulls his shirt off in a smooth stroke, and he unbuckles his belt and he opens the front of his jeans and she stands there in their little universe and watches. He tugs his socks off quickly, and then he pulls his briefs down and steps out of them, and when he steps toward her the naked tip of his naked cock nudges the fabric of her skirt and she looks down and gasps.

His palms are warm on the back of her hands. And on her forearms and her elbows and her upper arms, and when they slide up the plane of her shoulders to her neck she has to close her eyes. He kisses her eyelids. First one, then the other. Then she hears a zip and her dress is loosening, and his hands are back on her shoulders and by the time she opens her eyes again the yellow is billowing to the floor, and then she’s naked except for her panties, but then his hands are on her hips and her thighs and she doesn’t have panties anymore.

She doesn’t have dry cheeks, either.

“Why are you crying?” His voice is infinitely gentle.

“Oh.” She gasps. “Ben.” She rests both of her hands on his chest. “I just realized something.”

He cups her face in tender hands. “What is it?”

“I would’ve been okay without you. I don’t need you. I want you.” She’s not saying it right. She’s not telling him how much more it means this way: this conscious choice of hers. A woman who’s whole all by herself, with an ocean of free will, and she built a boat and sailed across to get to him. She looks up. “I didn’t mean—”

“I know exactly what you mean.” He cradles her face and looks down at her, and he does know, he really does. She can see it in his face. “I don’t need you, I want you.”

He doesn’t lay her down on top of the comforter. He could have, and he’d have been inside her that much sooner. But it seems important to him to untuck the sheets and fold them back so when he picks her up and slowly lowers her down on her back, she’s not _on_ his bed, she’s _in_ it, and then he’s between the sheets with her, and on her and in her, and if she weren’t already in love with him, this would’ve sealed her fate entirely: the way he cries out softly when he enters her, and looks down at her face in awe and lamplight, and there will never be a someday when she doesn’t want this man. In her life and in her body.

He trembles and breathes and smiles and pushes himself deeper and deeper, re-learning the place that she’d been saving for him. For this.

He seems to have lost his cool control in the last fifteen months, or else he set it aside for tonight, because they don’t need it right now. Not when he can snake his arms beneath her back and bury his face in her neck and rut into her like the world is ending. She moans and cries and wraps her arms around him and holds on as tight as she can, but not because she thinks he’ll leave. Because she wants to and she can and it’s the only way she has right now of trying to tell him exactly how loved he is, without words.

He slows his thrusts suddenly, and when she cums it’s fast and hard and with a surging laugh of desperate delight, because of course he knows how to startle an orgasm from her. He knows her body better than anyone in the world, and he knows _her_ that way too, and how lucky, how impossible, how _impossibly_ lucky that he knows her mind like he knows her body and he loves them both the same.

He’s kissing her neck now, and his thrusts have paused and he’s hot and thick where he holds her labia open. “I don’t think ‘m gonna last much longer,” he confesses to her jaw. “Sorry. I’ll make it good for you after, okay? But I can’t... because it’s _you,_ and...”

She’s not sure why her tears have started again, but she doesn’t need a reason, she just needs to stroke his hair and cuddle his face to hers and tell him _it’s okay._ Tell him, _cum for me._ _Love you. Cum. Ben._

He braces his hands by her head and bends down to kiss her and his hips start up again, and he doesn’t even last ten more thrusts. Not even five. He cries out wildly when he slams inside and empties himself in her, shaking and stuttering and utterly gone, to a place no one can follow except her.

When he collapses and rolls onto his side, he takes her with him, and she giggles and extracts her bottom leg from below his but leaves her top one slung over his. Like before. Like always.

He chuckles, breathlessly rueful. “I’d forgotten how perfect you are.”

She smiles and bites her bottom lip and lets him deposit a tired kiss on her forehead. She nestles a hand between their mouths to hide her grin. “Let’s face it. You’re getting old. Your stamina isn’t what it used to be.”

“My stamina is _exactly_ what it used to be,” he growls, yanking her closer as she yelps in delight.

“Oh yeah?” she needles playfully. “Then why’d I only cum once?”

“First of all, the night is young. You’re going to cum a _whole_ lot more than once.” His scowl relents at her giggle, and he wraps her tighter in his arms and kisses her soundly. “Second of all, I used to jerk off in the bathroom at work. On Saturdays. Before I left to come home to you.”

_“That’s_ how you lasted so long!” she gasps delightedly at the revelation.

“That’s how I lasted so long,” he rumbles. “And that’s how I’m going to last so long when I fuck you again in approximately half an hour.”

“Half an hour, huh?” She smirks. “What can we possibly find to do until then?”

“Well, I could try to tell you exactly how much I love you, but half an hour isn’t nearly enough for that.”

She giggles harder than she meant to, and it turns into a full laugh.

“What?” He grins and nips at her chin. “What’s so funny, you goof?”

“Not funny.” She wiggles against him and smiles contentedly. “Just happy.”

His smile quiets, and he tenderly hooks a strand of hair with one finger to push back from her face. “I’ve never seen you like this.”

Their faces are so close that she barely has to lean forward to leave a soft kiss on his lips. “I’ve never been like this.”

“Are you still scared?” His face is earnest.

“No,” she realizes. “Not anymore.”

“Why?”

She smiles softly and strokes his cheek with one finger. “I’ve never been in a relationship before. I thought I was too damaged. I thought _you_ were too damaged,” she admits. “I’ll probably get a lot of things wrong. But you make me want to try.”

He kisses her then. Firmly. A promise. “I’m going to make you so fucking happy,” he swears. “Just watch.”

“Are you sleepy, love?” He nuzzles the back of her neck, spooning her insistently.

She laughs tiredly. “Is that your way of asking if you can fuck me again?”

His voice is hot, and wicked. “What would make you think that?”

She grins. “Well if your hand inching below my bellybutton didn’t give it away, the fact that your cock is currently nudging my ass might have been an indication.”

“I can wait,” he insists, panting against her neck. “Until the morning. If you want to sleep.”

“Mm.” She blinks languidly. “As I recall, you owe me some orgasms. If you’re trying to get out of it, you can just say— _oh.”_

The suddenness of him inside her steals the rest of the sentence. Her mouth pants for something to suck or lick or kiss, and in a way it’s too bad he’s behind her, because she could be kissing him, but the realization makes her smile. That she has all the time in the world to kiss and be kissed. Because they’re going to do this again. A lot. And when she wants to kiss him she’ll be able to, and when she wants to tease him and deny him her lips she can do that too, to make the delayed allowance that much sweeter. She pants and gasps and gives herself a knuckle to bite down on in the meantime.

He cradles her and gropes her and kisses her and fucks her and she cums and cums and cums again and loses track of herself in that bliss-filled haze that he and his cock make of her mind, with his fingers furious on her clit and his cock soaked and unrelenting, and his voice in her ear telling her _you can give me one more, sweetheart, I know you can, just like that, I know you’re tired, love, you’re doing so well, you’re taking me so well, I could fuck you forever, I’m going to fuck you forever, for the rest of my life, love, cum for me, fucking perfect, oh God, oh fuck, like that, just like that, sweetheart, you’re everything, every single fucking thing._

He wrings out her body and saturates her soul. And after he shudders and puts some of him inside her a second time, she lifts his hand to her spent lips and kisses it and murmurs, “Thank you for waiting.”

He kisses her shoulder and gently pulls the sheet up to cover them. Tucking them in. “Waiting for what, sweetheart?”

“For me to be ready to love you.”

He only leaves her to turn the lamp off.

_Mm. What time’s it?_

_Almost three._

_D’you want me to go home?_

_Never._

_D’you still sleepwalk?_

_Sometimes._

_But I c’n stay?_

_I already told you the thing I didn’t want to accidentally say in my sleep._

_What is it?_

_I think you know._

_Mmm. Tell me again._

_I love you._


End file.
